Retrevo Takes On Amazon And BestBuy.com With New Marketplace

Retrevo.com, an online gadget review aggregator, recently launched its own online store that is designed to compete with the likes of Amazon.com and BestBuy.com. Retrevo marketing vice president Manish Rathi touted the new online store as a combination of product reviews with a virtual shopping cart.

One of the unique features of the new marketplace is the "Do Not Add To Cart Button" that is designed to help protect you from buying a gadget that hasn't been well reviewed. As Rathi put it, "We can't tell you it's wrong and then let you do it."

New Retrevo Marketplace Challenges Amazon and BestBuy.com

Artificial Intelligence-Based Consumer Advocate is First to Unite Research and
E-Commerce for Consumer Electronics

PRLog (Press Release) – Mar 17, 2011 – Consumer electronics review and shopping site Retrevo.com, today launched a new consumer electronics marketplace, offering full checkout, unbiased product recommendation, and for products that are not favorably reviewed, a precautionary Do Not Add to Cart button. The new Retrevo marketplace is built on the company’s AI-based recommendation engine and user-experience, that helps shoppers decide what to buy.

“Over the last five years, Retrevo has become the second largest review site in the world for consumer electronics,” said Retrevo CEO Vipin Jain. “Now Retrevo will help shoppers complete their journey by including checkout and order processing on our site.”

Solving the ‘What to Buy” problem

“Retrevo offers a unique, trusted experience designed to guide shoppers through the entire shopping experience, from discovery, to learning, to research, to purchase, to accessorizing,” said Retrevo Co-Founder and VP of Marketing Manish Rathi. “. In fact, Retrevo is the one site that thoroughly covers every aspect of consumer electronics ownership. We even help people find their lost manuals for over 100,000 products.”

“Watson” For Consumer Electronics

“There are more than 1 million consumer electronics products on the market today,” said Jain. “It’s virtually impossible for shoppers to keep track of the best ones to purchase. Retrevo uses Artificial Intelligence to sort through over 100 million data points a day, indexing reviews, tech specs, prices and more, to create user-friendly Value Maps and Real Time Reviews which feature visual, snapshot views of where specific products are in the market and how valuable they are.”

Retrevo’s Recommendation Engine was developed by a team of computer scientists, lead by Dr. Aditya Vailaya, an expert in Machine Learning and Statistical Pattern Recognition, previously with Agilent Labs.

Selling Without Selling Out: The Do Not Add To Cart Button

As an e-commerce site, the new Retrevo.com has an Add To Cart button on items it recommends for purchase and that are available in the marketplace. But as a consumer advocate, Retrevo also has a Do Not Add To Cart button, reserved for products that the system does not recommend. The button acts as a safety switch,” said Rathi. “Some shoppers will come to Retrevo looking for a specific item that may be a bad buy. We feel it’s our duty to tell them not to buy it. We’ll even recommend better products for them. Of course, if they really want a poorly reviewed item, we’ll direct them to a retailer that offers it. We just won’t be the ones selling it.”