Shopping Network Hits Loyalty Card Holders With Seven Million Personalized Ads

Grocery Shopping Network Now Produces Seven Million Personalized Ads for Loyalty Card Holders Every Week

Andrew Robinson, GSN CEO, Reflects on Architecting the Unparalleled Grocery Personalization System

MINNEAPOLIS-- May 19, 2008 --GSN initially launched its proprietary personalization engine in May 2005. Today, the engine builds over seven million household-specific ads on a weekly basis for clients including Giant Food Stores of Carlisle, Kings Supermarkets, Niemann Foods, Ukrop's, and others. With this engine, grocery stores are able to remember who their customers are, what they like, and tell them when their favorite items are on sale. Unlike less advanced engines, the GSN personalization engine goes beyond providing exact matches. "GSN's personalization engine is powerful because its algorithms take into account many variables when building household-specific offers and ads. Beyond the items a consumer normally purchases, the system also recommends products the consumer has not purchased, but is likely to purchase. This gives the consumer more savings opportunities and grocers the ability to expand category purchases and increase basket size," says Andy Robinson, Grocery Shopping Network CEO. The engine examines sale items in the store, both advertised and unadvertised, and through its proprietary system, provides a consumer with a unique weekly ad built just for his/her household.

The idea for the system struck Andy in the early 1990s. Andy was raising two young children and taking trips to the supermarket to fulfill the household's weekly grocery needs. Like many consumers, Andy wanted to maximize the value of every dollar spent. He often achieved this goal, but doing so meant spending extra time and effort finding the right products. During one of his weekly trips that was taking a little longer than normal, Andy asked himself, "Why doesn't the grocery store remember who I am, what I like, and let me know the items that are relevant to my household that are on sale?" That question led Andy Robinson to incorporate one of the first companies focused on providing websites that fulfill the needs of shoppers, grocery retailers, and consumer packaged goods companies, Grocery Shopping Network (f/k/a HomeTown Info, Inc) in April of 1996. Thanks to Andy's vision and leadership, GSN now provides grocery retailers with the most advanced website technology available in the marketplace.

Since its inception, the company has purchased and integrated $80 million worth of technology including UCook.com and Beeline. UCook.com was a standalone recipe portal with over 65,000 recipes searchable by course, prep time, ingredients, skill level and more. GSN repurposed the portal and integrated it into the company's software. Customers using a retail grocery website powered by GSN have access to all the recipes and features of the original Ucook.com website, but now GSN's software even suggests recipe ideas based on the grocery store's sale items. Beeline is a scoring engine that was developed by Symbol Technologies. With the acquisition, development, and integration of Beeline into GSN's existing technology, Andy knew he would soon be able to provide an answer to his original question.

Andy continues, "I'm extremely proud GSN was able to accomplish this challenge. The technology enables retailers to better serve customers on a one-to-one basis by providing offers that are specific and relevant to individual customers. The customer saves time and money. The retailer becomes more relevant to the customer because the retailer has provided the customer with more relevance. It's a win-win."

Andrew Robinson, Founder and CEO

As the original entrepreneur of Grocery Shopping Network, Inc. ("GSN") it was Andy's vision that propelled GSN to become a premier provider of digital marketing services. Mr. Robinson has extensive experience in the marketing fulfillment and grocery industries. He served as the Vice President of Fulfillment Systems, Inc. (FSI) early in his career. In 1990, after working in the technology industry for a few years, Mr. Robinson partnered with two fulfillment industry executives and formed Right Choice Services Inc., a marketing fulfillment firm serving Fortune 500 Consumer Packaged Goods Companies working as its COO and eventually CEO. The convergence of events and ideas, including the Internet, coupled with experience gained working in the consumer marketing and advertising worlds, prompted Andy to build the GSN products and services that serve as the cornerstone of GSN's consumer ad network which is renowned for engaging shoppers by providing shopping list tools and relevant content at the place they shop.

About Grocery Shopping Network

Grocery Shopping Network provides grocery retailers' Web sites with a suite of proprietary software products that integrate shopping list building, recipes and meal planning with relevant, focused advertising content. GSN (www.groceryshopping.net) brings together the Web and in-store supermarket shopping experience. A GSN-powered site enables consumers to seamlessly shop their store, be presented with sales and promotions in the context of the items they are planning to purchase, access and save recipes for the items they plan to purchase, plan meals and utilize the many discount offers (including coupons) made available by brand manufacturers.

Contacts

Grocery Shopping Network
Albin Andolshek, 612-238-4942