El Corte Inglés boasts over 700k reviews as a result of brand syndication

El Corte Inglés leverages customer feedback to create a better online shopping experience

El Corte Inglés, Europe’s largest chain of department stores, has created a unique business model and purchasing style. It maintains a strong reputation for offering high-quality products since opening more than 80 years ago, and its emphasis on personalized and quality customer service helps explain why customers remain so loyal to the company.

More and more shoppers today are skipping the stores and buying online. As a result, top retailers are dedicating more of their focus and efforts towards building and expanding their e-commerce presence. The same is true for El Corte Inglés, which strives to provide online shoppers with the same level of service it has in physical stores for decades.

The company accomplishes this by partnering with Bazaarvoice and leveraging user-generated content (UGC) to help customers make informed purchase decisions and try new products with confidence.

UGC empowers grocery store shoppers to make the right purchasing decisions

Supermercado El Corte Inglés, a grocery store chain owned by the company, serves as one example of El Corte Inglés’ success in bringing the positive in-store experience to the e-commerce space.

Grocery shopping behavior is rapidly changing, as a growing number of consumers buy their food products online. Many consumers today research products online before eventually purchasing in-store, and others are using their mobile phones while actively shopping in physical store aisles.

This presents retailers with an opportunity to win new customers and increase basket sizes by giving shoppers access to product reviews from other customers. In fact, brands and retailers see a 48% average increase in conversion and a 57% average lift in revenue per visitor among shoppers who interact with UGC, according to Bazaarvoice’s Shopper Experience Index with data from more than a billion monthly shoppers across more than 6,000 brand and retail sites in the Bazaarvoice network.

Giving customers the kind of content they trust most

Driving review volume is a central component of an impactful UGC program. To jumpstart review collection across its large product catalog, Supermercado El Corte Inglés activated a post-interaction email to proactively ask customers to review the products they purchased.

In just the first month, the post-interaction emails experienced a 14% review submission rate, resulting in nearly 30,000 new reviews. Not only were customers engaged and eager to submit reviews, 91% of them recommended the products.

To increase review volume even more significantly, Supermercado El Corte Inglés collects reviews from brands that syndicate reviews to retail sites on the Bazaarvoice network. More than a dozen brands distribute reviews to this supermarket. Syndication helps brands ensure their content is available wherever consumers are shopping and helps retailers deliver an exceptional shopping experience with plenty of content across their product pages.

Supermercado El Corte Inglés currently has more than 700,000 reviews and a 4.6 average overall rating as a result of syndication and post-interaction emails. In addition, the retailer’s effective product coverage rose from 12% in August to 61% in November 2019. The grocery chain also saw a 7% increase in conversion rate among products with reviews.

A great experience from in-store to online

By enabling post-interaction emails and syndication, Supermercado El Corte Inglés created an online experience that matches the level of service customers expect from the El Corte Inglés brand. Customers can now read through thousands of reviews before making their purchase with confidence.

These efforts to increase UGC helps drive customer loyalty and create engaging, market-leading experiences across El Corte Inglés supermarket stores.