Best Buy, eBay, Google and Walmart Support New GS1 U.S. Standard

The GS1 U.S. Simple Product Listing helps ensure that products are easier to discover by search engines and consumers

Lawrenceville, N.J.May 20, 2015—A new GS1 U.S. standard offers a common approach for listing and classifying products across all e-commerce platforms. Developed in collaboration with 18 companies, including Best Buy, Bing, CNET, eBay, Google and Walmart, the GS1 U.S. Simple Product Listing™ helps ensure that products are accurately represented across all sales channels, and are more easily discoverable by search engines and consumers.

The GS1 U.S. 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. By bridging the gap between retailers and suppliers, and providing an automated product classification system, speed to market is accelerated.

“Consumer demand and advancing technology has created an unprecedented need for accurate, authentic product information across any device,” said Amit Menipaz, vice president, structured data at eBay Marketplaces. “The GS1 U.S. 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.”

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

The initial release of the GS1 U.S. Simple Product Listing includes six of the most commonly searched product segments:

  • Books, music and movies.
  • Clothing, shoes and accessories.
  • Consumer electronics.
  • Collectibles and memorabilia.
  • Gift and pre-paid service cards.
  • Tickets.

“Products need to be represented accurately and consistently, in potentially thousands of different places online,” said Rich Richardson, vice president of emerging capabilities and industries, GS1 U.S. “In today’s global, digitally connected world, retailers and brand owners need to simplify the sharing, setup and usability of trusted product information across digital and physical commerce channels. The GS1 U.S. Simple Product Listing is a product of key stakeholders from industry joining together to establish a shared standard for listing and classifying products across e-commerce platforms.”

As part of the ongoing standard development process, GS1 U.S. will collect and share industry feedback with the GS1 U.S. Simple Product Listing Workgroup participants to identify potential opportunities to improve the GS1 U.S. Simple Product Listing Standard—expanding and creating a comprehensive representation of product types, attributes, attribute values, exclusionary terms and inclusionary terms. An additional 21 product segments will be added by the workgroup over the next year, representing a total of 27 segments.

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