• by Tameka Kee , May 14, 2007

Away.com, a subsidiary of Orbitz Worldwide, has signed on as one of the first major sites to use Bazaarvoice's new Ask & Answer service--bolstering purchase decisions by allowing users to post and respond to specific product and service questions right alongside standard product information.

Consumers are increasingly researching product purchases online, but sometimes have "questions that aren't addressed by the manufacturer's product description or a company's marketing department," said Brett Hurt, CEO and founder of the Austin, TX-based Bazaarvoice.

Spurred in part by the popularity of Yahoo Answers (with a reported 75 million unique monthly users in January) and the success of its own Ratings and Reviews platform, Bazaarvoice developed the Ask & Answer service to help businesses derive value from product-specific, consumer-generated content. (A recent joint report by iProspect and Jupiter Research found that a third of Internet users have used sites containing user-generated content to help decide whether or not to buy products).

For Away.com, questions like "Should I include a guided hike as part of this travel gift?" can now be answered by site visitors who have had an actual away.com experience. Bazaarvoice integrates the Q&A directly into the initial Away.com page--getting consumers the answers they need without taking them off the purchase path.

In addition to hosting the java-based Ask & Answer platform, Bazaarvoice includes content analytics, moderation and syndication tools as part of the service--allowing e-tailers to maximize their ROI from social commerce.

"Community is an important focus for us, especially given the nature of travel purchases," said Brian Hoyt, spokesperson for Orbitz Worldwide. "We're excited about partnering with Bazaarvoice and are eager to see if Ask & Answer can produce the kinds of results that we're looking for."