This holiday season consumers want two things when they are shopping - a good friend and a good cause - according to (pdf) the American Marketing Association, which said social networking and cause-related marketing are top holiday trends, writes MarketingCharts.
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Thursday, Dec. 6, accounted for $803 million in online sales, up 28 percent versus a year ago - and the heaviest online spending day in history, according to comScore’s update of holiday season e-commerce spending for the first 37 days (Nov. 1 - Dec. 7) of the 2007 holiday season, writes MarketingCharts.
Gift recommendations dominate online holiday discussions on blogs and range from one-off reviews to comprehensive shopping guides, according to (pdf) a Nielsen Online analysis of 1,000 influential blogs* during November, writes MarketingCharts.
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Google was the most-visited property in the U.K. in October, with 29.1 million unique visitors age 15 or older, and reaching 90 percent of the total U.K. internet audience, according to a comScore World Metrix report on the most-visited and fastest-growing properties, reports MarketingCharts.
The deadline to place orders for ground shipping with delivery by Christmas is on or before December 18, according to most retailers.
One in four internet users read consumer-generated reviews online, which then have a big impact - affecting not only what they purchase offline but also how much they are willing to pay for it, according to a new study conducted by comScore with The Kelsey Group, reports MarketingCharts.
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Traffic to the Hitwise 100 Retail Index, composed of the top 100 retail websites, received 5.07 percent of all U.S. visits on Nov. 26 (Cyber Monday) - an increase of 26 percent compared with last year’s Cyber Monday, which received 4.02 percent of visits, Hitwise reported (via MarketingCharts).
After attacks from MoveOn and other privacy groups, Facebook has opted to modify its Beacon feature, which reveals items people have purchased from partner sites on their friends’ news feeds.
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Gap will begin selling a line of women’s shoes in its U.S. stores via an expanded partnership with accessory designer, Pierre Hardy.
Cyber Monday (Nov. 26) online spending totaled a record $733 million - a 21 percent increase versus last year and an 84 percent jump from the average daily online spending totals during the preceding four weeks - according to comScore, reports MarketingCharts.
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Online retailers are neglecting the customer experience, instead focusing too much on innovation as they ignore the basics - therefore leaving money on the table - according to Future Now’s “2007 Retail Customer Experience Study,” writes MarketingCharts.
The first 18 days of the holiday season resulted in more than $7 billion in online retail spending, a 17 percent gain compared with the corresponding period last year, according to the first in a series of twice-weekly holiday season e-commerce updates from comScore, reports MarketingCharts.
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Traffic to Black Friday advertising websites is increasing earlier in 2007 than it did in 2006, with traffic up 52 percent for the week ended Nov. 10 compared with the year-earlier period, according to Hitwise, reports MarketingCharts.
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Chief marketing officers at leading U.S. retailers estimate that sales on “Black Friday” (November 23 this year) will account for 15 percent of their total holiday revenue in 2007 and online sales on “Cyber Monday” (the Monday after Thanksgiving) will account for 12 percent of holiday season internet sales, according to a BDO Seidman study, reports MarketingCharts.
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Retail e-commerce (non-travel) increased 19 percent compared with Oct. 2006 levels and reached nearly $10 billion (excluding auctions and large corporate purchases), according to comScore’s U.S. e-commerce spending figures for October, writes MarketingCharts.
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Thirty-seven percent of shoppers intend to hit the stores the day after Thanksgiving, according to a new poll from Moritz. That number is up 3.4 percent from its survey last year.
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In an attempt to add more user-friendly features - and to forestall any increase in the drop in listings - eBay plans to launch a social networking service.
With 53 percent of online shoppers early technology adopters - despite constituting just 36 percent of the North American population - retailers are feeling compelled to provide a consistently positive, more sophisticated shopping experience, according to the tenth annual Shop.org study conducted by Forrester Research (via MarketingCharts).
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U.S. retail ecommerce sales for the second quarter of 2007, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, was $33.6 billion - an increase of 6.4 percent (±0.8 percent) from the first quarter of 2007, according to estimates from the Census Bureau of the Commerce Department (via MarketingCharts).
Seventy-two percent of major online retailers are regularly sending out welcome emails this year, up from 66 percent last year, according to a new study by the Email Experience Council (via DM News).
