Retrevo Preps Consumers with "Black Friday" Strategies

Black Friday, Black Friday, Black Friday. That and Cyber Monday, that's all we hear right now. Some people are really prepared, others needs some help. If you are in the latter category, Retrevo, which bills itself as the site that "matches people and electronics" has two guides to help you sort through the confusion.

First up is their Geek Speak Guide (.PDF). While probably a bit elementary for this audience, if you don't know what Bluetooth is, it might help you.

Like I said, most reading this probably don't need that sort of help.

Second is their Black Friday Strategy Guide (.PDF). It has some general tips, which are very helpful, and some of their top picks in categories such as GPS, computers, HDTVs and more.

Retrevo allows you to search for products and look for deals, but in addition, each search results lists not just pricing information, but what both expert and user reviews. The summary information also includes what they call "Community Sentiment" and "Value Rating."

"Community Sentiment" is a measure, determined by what they call "Trevolysis," of how the community at large (not just users of the site, but aggregated across the Web) feels about a product: “thumbs up”, “sideways thumb” or “thumbs down”.

"Value Rating" is what it sounds like, and gets recomputed as new products are introduced.

An example would be this Magellan Roadmate 1200 GPS, one of their top GPS deals. You can see it's fairly priced, and has a positive Community Sentiment.

Also, if you set up an account you can save user manuals, a shopping list, and so forth. The user manual idea is nice, though they don't have everything. They also have some products with minimal information, such as this Canon CanoScan LiDE 200: no Community Sentiment or Value Rating.

Finally, the Retrevo Pulse feature, which was introduced recently, tells you how demand and pricing for various categories of electronics is trending. For example, currently, it looks like overall prices have remained stable, dropping very slightly, while overall demand has skyrocketed recently --- wonder why? --- holidays, anyone?

If you click into each index you can drill down into categories. Digital camera prices started falling in late October, for example. Demand for laptops (click above to enlarge), meanwhile, has skyrocketed in the last week or so.

All in all, there's some good info at this site. Take a look at the guides and the site, and get ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.