PowerReviews, which provides ratings and reviews technology to e-retailers and other marketers, has named Pehr Luedtke CEO. Luedtke replaces former CEO and co-founder Andy Chen, who will stay on with the company as head of strategic partnerships and as a board member.
Most recently, Luedtke was general manager at user-generated product reviews site Epinions, a part of eBay-owned Shopping.com. While in that role, Luedtke also ran media advertising for Shopping.com. Before joining Shopping.com, Luedtke worked briefly with eBay on the company’s China operations. Luedtke also held several senior strategy and sales roles at Levi Strauss and Company, where he helped introduce the Levi brand into Wal-Mart and Target stores.
Luedtke says his experience working with retailers and brand manufacturers, as well as social commerce and Internet companies like Epinions, eBay and Shopping.com, make him a good fit for a PowerReviews.
“It is clear that social commerce is quickly transforming the way retailers and manufacturers do business. In addition to improving in-season retail metrics, social commerce creates fundamentally new ways of developing, marketing and selling products. And it opens new avenues for better long term customer engagement,” says Luedtke. “I am excited to join the PowerReviews team. The company, with its innovative product offerings and deep retailer relationships, is uniquely positioned to become the essential partner for brands and retailers to capitalize on this sea change.”
PowerReviews says the appointment builds on its efforts to expand its social commerce initiatives. Last month PowerReviews launched two new tools: BrandConnect and Social Megaphone. Brand Connect allows marketers to monitor and track what customers are saying about their products to help spot trends and issues. Social Megaphone is a tool e-retailers can add to their sites that allows customers to post reviews to Facebook, Twitter and blogs.
“Retailers and brands are adopting social commerce tools at an extraordinary rate,” says Chen. “Pehr brings an integrated marketing, sales and retailer perspective, and the operational experience we need in order to harness this significant opportunity. I look forward to working closely with Pehr to build on our leadership position as the structured content leader and to accelerate our growth.”
In the future, Luedtke says PowerReivews will build on its ability to analyze aggregated consumer data from all of its clients’ web sites to help clients better manage their businesses, Luedtke says.
“We have the power to leverage a collective consumer voice to help retailers and brand manufacturers better engage with and sell to their customers,” Luedtke says. “We can understand and see what people are talking about and what people are buying.” E-retailers could use such information to guide pricing and purchasing decisions and inventory management, he says.
A new study from e-commerce consultancy The E-tailing Group commissioned by PowerReviews finds that companies are ramping up their social media marketing strategies.
86% of the 117 companies polled —including multichannel retailers, manufacturers, web-only merchants and catalogers—have a Facebook fan page and 10% more plan to launch one in the next year, the study found. 65% are communicating via Twitter, 55% publish customer product reviews, 55% have their own blogs, and 50% produce their own video or display videos submitted by consumers.
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