“At Barnes & Noble College, we are dedicated to bringing our campus partners ‘what’s next’ in the education retail industry, and our launch of social commerce is just the latest example,” said Max J. Roberts, president of Barnes & Noble College. “Combining our retail excellence with a deep understanding of student and university trends, we are delivering innovative solutions that are transforming our college bookstores and the student experience.”

Barnes & Noble College joins only a handful of retailers in leveraging the ever-increasing power of social networking sites such as Facebook—and its more than 500 million users—for e-commerce. From this social commerce platform, students now can “like” the products they buy from the bookstore and show their friends what they have purchased (or would like to purchase), thereby recommending the products to their peers.

Among college aged students, peer to peer or “word of mouth” recommendations have tremendous power and significantly influence buying behavior—and social media continues to fuel these forms of marketing. According to McKinsey & Company, “word of mouth” is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions. Additionally, a recent Colloquy study found that 56 percent of young adults rely on social networks such as Facebook when it comes to recommending products and services.
“In a university community, students are engaged in campus life through their social networks, including purchasing and recommending products and services,” Roberts added. “In fact, we currently have nearly 250,000 Facebook fans, and the platform has jumped from the fifth to the number one referral site to our campus bookstore websites since the current school year began. We now are taking our social media marketing strategy one step further by integrating the two successful platforms into one social retailing experience.”
Leading social media firms, Enter New Media and Expion, partnered with Barnes & Noble in the development of this innovative platform, which features products found on each bookstore’s website. In addition to the customary Facebook sections (Wall, Info, etc.), the new social commerce platform includes customized tabs, such as:
“The Shop”– showcasing the hottest trends at each individual bookstore
“Books” – offering textbooks in all formats (new, used, rental, digital) and access to NOOKstudy, the retailer’s innovative eReading and study application
“Mascot” – featuring alumni, athletic and other apparel, online promotions, sweepstakes, and a Top Fan section
“The Hall” –a live feed to a student-focused blog, unique applications, gifts and new student orientation materials

Social commerce is the newest example of how Barnes & Noble College is redefining the college retail industry. An early pioneer in social media, the retailer continues to integrate this tool in all of its marketing, communications and customer service initiatives, including Facebook tabs that support important school causes and Twitter and FourSquare initiatives. Further leveraging the power of peer to peer communications, Barnes & Noble College also launched its unique Student Ambassador Program this past year. This program engages students to promote their college bookstore to their peers using both conventional grassroots and evolving social media channels.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 705 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, Inc., also operates 636 college bookstores serving nearly 4 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, which also features more than two million titles in its NOOK Bookstore™ (www.bn.com/ebooks). Through Barnes & Noble’s NOOK™ eReading product offering, customers can buy and read eBooks on the widest range of platforms, including NOOK eBook Readers, devices from partner companies, and hundreds of the most popular mobile and computing devices using free NOOK software.
General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com.

About Enter New Media
Enter New Media (ENM) is a leading social media agency specifically focused on creating value for the entertainment, fashion, and retail sectors. ENM is a privately held company based in New York City. For more information, go to http://enternewmedia.com/.

About Expion
Expion enables brands to monitor and manage local social media in real-time to produce actionable intelligence and maintain alignment of social media activities across corporate and local levels to generate extraordinary results. Expion is a privately held company headquartered in Raleigh, N.C. For more information, visit www.expion.com.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kosmix, underscoring its commitment to social and mobile commerce. Kosmix, based in Mountain View, Calif., has developed a social media technology platform that filters and organizes content in social networks to connect people with real-time information that matters to them.

Kosmix was founded by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, early pioneers of online shopping, whose first company, Junglee, was acquired by Amazon.com in 1998. The founders and the Kosmix team will operate as part of the newly formed @WalmartLabs and continue to be based in Silicon Valley. Walmart plans to expand the @WalmartLabs team and expects this new group will create technologies and businesses around social and mobile commerce that will support Walmart’s global multi-channel strategy, which integrates the shopping experience between bricks and mortar stores and e-commerce. Walmart operates retail businesses in 15 countries and e-commerce businesses in nine countries.

Kosmix’s innovative technology platform searches and analyzes connections in real-time data streams to deliver highly personalized insights to users. The platform powers TweetBeat, a real-time social media filter for live events with more than five million visits last month; Kosmix.com, a site to discover social content by topic; and RightHealth, one of the top three health and medical information sites by global reach.

“We are expanding our capabilities in today’s rapidly growing social commerce environment,” said Eduardo Castro-Wright, Walmart’s vice chairman. “Social networking and mobile applications are increasingly becoming a part of our customers’ day-to-day lives globally, influencing how they think about shopping, both online and in retail stores. We are excited to have the Kosmix team join us to accelerate the development of our social and mobile commerce offerings.”

“The world of social media is exploding and for millions of consumers their social connections matter hugely in their daily lives,” said Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix. “Our work has focused on developing a social genome platform that captures the connections between people, places, topics, products and events as expressed through social media — be it a feed, a tweet or a post. We are thrilled to join one of the world’s largest companies and combine our work with Walmart’s vast online and offline retail businesses.”

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and the company anticipates it will close during the first half of this year.

About Walmart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) serves customers and members more than 200 million times per week at 9,000 retail units under 60 different banners in 15 countries. With fiscal year 2011 sales of $419 billion, Walmart employs more than 2 million associates worldwide. Walmart continues to be a leader in sustainability, corporate philanthropy and employment opportunity. Additional information about Walmart can be found by visiting http://www.walmartstores.com/, on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/Walmart, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/walmart. Online merchandise sales are available at http://www.walmart.com/ and http://www.samsclub.com/.

SOURCE Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.