U.S. visits to online retail websites have declined for the eighth consecutive week: For the week ended Oct. 25 visits to a custom category of 500 retail websites declined 3% from a year earlier, according to data from Hitwise, an Experian company, writes Retailer Daily.
email this
permanent link
U.S. online retail sales this holiday season will reach $44 billion, a 12% increase over last year and the slowest growth rate to date - indicative of the difficult economic environment affecting formerly more resilient web buyers, according to a Forrester Research report, writes Retailer Daily.
email this
permanent link
Amazon on Friday launched, in beta, a new e-commerce site, Windowshop.com, which allows users to not only window-shop but also to sample - and actually purchase - books, movies, music and videogames, according to the Amazon Web Services blog.
For the first time, the web has surpassed the store as the preferred way for multi-channel shoppers to purchase holiday gifts, according to the e-tailing group’s third annual “Mindset of the Multi-Channel Shopper Holiday Survey,” sponsored by ATG, Retailer Daily reports.
email this
permanent link
Fancy the song in a YouTube video? Click an e-commerce ad to buy it on iTunes or Amazon.
email this
permanent link
More than one in three holiday shoppers - or 62.3 million adult consumers - report they begin holiday shopping before Thanksgiving, according to (pdf) new data from Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI), reports Retailer Daily.
email this
permanent link
Sales in the 2008 holiday season will rise just 2.2 percent, to $470.4 billion - well below the 10-year average of 4.4 percent, and the lowest growth level since 2002, when holiday sales* rose 1.3 percent from the previous year (see graph), according to the National Retail Federation. writes Retailer Daily.
email this
permanent link
A majority (61 percent) of Baby Boomer internet users in the U.S. have visited sites that offer streaming or downloadable video, while 41 percent have visited online social networks, according to a report from The NPD Group (via MarketingCharts.)
email this
permanent link
Blue Christmas Holiday sales are expected to grow by just 1.5 percent to $527.5 billion this year - the smallest growth rate since 1991, when growth registered 1.2 percent, according to TNS Retail Forward.
email this
permanent link
Nearly half (47 percent) of retail chief financial officers predict that the economy will experience a meaningful turnaround by July 2009, with the highest concentration (28 percent) citing the second quarter of next year as the most promising, according to a BDO Seidman, LLP study (via Retailer Daily).
email this
permanent link
Though both Generation X and Generation Y moms view the internet as a must-have tool for finding child-rearing information, there is a significant generational difference in their online behaviors and preferences, according to (pdf) a study from The Parenting Group and NewMediaMetrics, writes MarketingCharts.
email this
permanent link
eBay plans to lay off about 10 percent of its 15,000 employees, reports Barrons.
More retailers than ever see affiliate marketing as an effective sales channel - 46 percent of them rate it as very cost-effective for driving customer acquisition, up from 44 percent last year - but reduced budgets are affecting traffic and sales, finds new research (via Retailer Daily).
email this
permanent link
A big part of the online shopping experience is reading product reviews from anonymous customers - but one media company is attempting to make those reviews a little more personal.
email this
permanent link
Consumers in all income segments are cutting back spending, and doing so to a greater extent recently than at the beginning of the second quarter, according to a comScore study examining changes in consumer attitudes and perceptions about the U.S. economy (via Retailer Daily).
email this
permanent link
AutoTrader.com ranks highest among online buying services in satisfying auto dealers with new-vehicle leads, while Cars.com ranks highest in satisfying dealers with used-vehicle leads, according to a J.D. Power and Associates study, MarketingCharts reports.
A pilot program in Phoenix will deliver coupons via cell phone to Visa and Chase credit and debit card holders who sign up to receive them from their merchants of choice.
email this
permanent link
Microsoft is acquiring Greenfield Online, the parent company of European price comparison site ciao.com, for $486 million.
email this
permanent link
Polo Ralph Lauren will soon launch what will become one of the mobile web’s first ecommerce sites.
email this
permanent link
July same-store sales growth weakened to 2.8% from the prior month and remained about the same as prior-year results for about 40 retailers reporting monthly results (pdf), TNS Retail Forward reports (via Retailer Daily). July’s result is down from a 4.5% sales-weighted composite reported the previous month and off slightly from the 2.9% composite reported in July of 2007.
email this
permanent link
