Certona’s Real-Time Personalization Solution Helps Raise PETCO’s Online Sales

SAN DIEGO – February 2, 2009 – Certona, a provider of real-time personalization and revenue optimization solutions for multi-channel retailers, announced today that PETCO achieved significant results in increased online sales and order values on its Web site, www.PETCO.com, using Certona’s Resonance® solution in the last quarter of 2008.

Since the system’s implementation last September, PETCO has seen average online shopping order values increase more than 26 percent and average items per order rise nearly 30 percent for visitors who took advantage of Resonance’s personalized product recommendations.

“Resonance is a valuable service for multi-channel retailers like PETCO, and works particularly well for our customers because the service provides them with targeted recommendations based on what they are shopping for and purchasing during the same online shopping session,” said John Lazarchic, Vice President of E-commerce at PETCO. “We’ve found that Recommendations were found in more than 10 percent of all orders and we expect that number to continue to grow in 2009.”

Resonance is a SaaS platform that enables retailers to provide relevant, individualized content to customers based on their current shopping behavior as well as their historical buying patterns. Companies can offer cross-sell/up-sell recommendations from various locations on their Web site by simply monitoring the traffic patterns of their visitors.

Resonance uses a predictive model to deliver the best results based on the individual visitor’s behavior during the current shopping session only after 3-4 clicks or interactions with the web site, as opposed to other tools that rely only on purchase history or visitor preferences. PETCO also plans to take advantage of Resonance® Email™ to dynamically incorporate personalized product recommendations into its online purchase confirmation and outbound customer marketing emails.

“Resonance has proven to be successful in not only helping retailers increase their profits, but also providing customers a better shopping experience for their first time and subsequent visits,” said Meyar Sheik, CEO of Certona Corporation. “We’ve been extremely happy with the results PETCO has achieved thus far and how our service has contributed to their top line, but also how it has helped pet owners purchase more products that cater specifically to their pet.”