Best Buy, Walmart support GS1 US standard

May 20, 2015

Developed in collaboration with 18 companies, including Best Buy, eBay, Google and Walmart, the GS1 US Simple Product Listing, released this week, was designed to help ensure that products are accurately represented across all sales channels and are easily discoverable by search engines and consumers, according to a release. A new GS1 US standard offers a common approach for listing and classifying products across all e-commerce platforms, the release stated.

"Consumer demand and advancing technology has created an unprecedented need for accurate, authentic product information across any device," Amit Menipaz, vice president, structured data at eBay Marketplaces, said in a statement. "The GS1 US Simple Product Listing will help us to standardize and simplify that information for sellers by reducing complexity of data integrity challenges within our ecosystem. This technology enables eBay's consumers to more effectively find what they are looking for across our global marketplace with more than 800 million listings."

The GS1 US Simple Product Listing Standard enables trading partners to use a single standardized set of consumer-friendly terms that are linked to their existing internal product hierarchies so that consumers are presented with the same trusted information across all channels, according to the release.

"Trusted product content helps drive seamless shopping experiences for our customers. The GS1 US Simple Product Listing provides a standard set of customer-centric attributes that facilitates product content definition and acquisition," Ram Rampalli, global head of product content acquisition, Walmart Global eCommerce, said in a statement. "Additionally, we are able to streamline operations through more interoperable, efficient data handling processes that help reduce costs."