online retailers

Online holiday spending to hit $43.4 billion this year

Online retailers will have good reason to make merry this holiday season.

People shopping via the Internet will spend to the tune of $43.4 billion during November and December, according to a report out today from ComScore.

That figure is a 17 percent gain over last year's online holiday spending, which itself rose 15 percent over 2010's number. It's also way ahead of the retail industry's expectation of just a 4.1 percent rise in overall consumer spending this season.

"The strength leading up to and during the holiday season-to-date, in addition to a … Read more

Amazon to start selling wine?

It's a well-known hidden secret that online shopping is made more fluid by a glass of evening pinot noir.

Somehow, inhibitions subside and emotional -- that would be material -- needs are given full rein.

How clever, then, of Amazon to assist you in your online shopping comfort by offering you wine shipments to go with the books, movies, and 55-gallon tubs of personal lubricant it currently offers.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Amazon will be launching a wine marketplace in the next few weeks, one that will surely lift the spirits.

It seems that company executives … Read more

Amazon Marketplace merchants complain of competition with...Amazon?

Amazon's Marketplace has been a boon for third-party merchants looking to sell their products online. But according to a new report, it's not always fun working with the online retail giant.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that some retailers in Amazon's Marketplace have witnessed the online company examining which products they sell that are popular, and then offering them itself to the detriment of those merchants.

The Journal spoke with one retailer, Jeff Peterson of Collectible Supplies, who sold as many as 100 Pillow Pets a day. After continued success, he claims Amazon started selling … Read more

Google tries, tries again with online shopping

Amazon may not exactly be quaking quite yet, but Google is taking another stab at revamping its lackluster online-shopping business by forging closer commercial links with online merchants and improving its product-related search function.

The Web giant rolled out a new initiative today that renames its fornerly uninspiring "Google Product Search" service as "Google Shopping" while also changing the ground rules:

First, by requiring merchants to pay for listings (Google calls them "product-listing ads") that were formerly free; Second, by inserting these paid product placements into general search results more obviously and with bigger … Read more

Apple scores big bump in customer satisfaction

Apple took home a 5-point jump in customer satisfaction, according to the E-Retail Satisfaction Index published today by customer analytics site ForeSee.

The iPhone maker's retail Web site scored 85 out of 100 in this year's index, compared with 80 last year. Only one other retailer, RueLaLa.com, managed a 5-point gain though that site grabbed an overall grade of only 75.

Despite Apple's ascent, it could only rise to second place, having achieved the same grade as QVC. On top as usual was Amazon.com, which captured a score of 89, up from 86 last year.… Read more

Clothing site features naked man in children's ad

The uptight can sometimes not understand the liberal.

Some feel that's why some Americans don't understand the French. Yet who can possibly understand how it was that the French clothing retailer La Redoute managed not to notice a naked man in an ad featuring children?

The way the BBC exposes it, the picture was there for all to see for almost a day before someone realized that there, in the water behind the happy little kids, was a happy old chap, naked as the day is long.

Because most people in the world have nothing better to do … Read more

Online retailers' latest target: The tipsy

There's something about a fine Lebanese Cinsault or a luscious Napa Cabernet that brings out a little more of your true self.

After a couple of glasses, you like other people more. You even like yourself more, which is something online retailers suddenly appear to appreciate.

An intoxicating article in the New York Times suggests that those who sell things online are sensing that there's a big, um, untapped market out there: the sozzled.

Yes, the tipsy, the slightly inebriated, the positively pissed as a newt (as the English would have it)--all seem to translate their loosened … Read more

Dare you rent toys online for your kids this Christmas?

Children need toys. Parents need quiet children. So they buy those children toys.

Yet toys are expensive. And children are fickle. So a site called Toygaroo has decided to offer parents the choice of renting toys.

The site offers various plans, just like Netflix. For example, for $24.99 you get four toys every other month. For $34.99, you get 4 toys every month. And for $52.99 you get eight toys that will delight your children beyond all measure.

WBZ-TV Boston decided to chat with parents who seemed rather delighted with the whole thing.

What seems splendid is … Read more

The Amazon-California tax debacle: We all lose

In this winter, summer, spring, and fall of our discontent, every politician with a larynx is opining on how best to reduce the country's unemployment rate. All the more reason, then, for California to ram through a piece of tax legislation that could cost a lot of new jobs.

So it was that today, Amazon caved, dropping its opposition to California's plan to force cyberretailers to collect taxes on online sales. The plan, originally slated to start in July, now will take effect next year as part of a deal under which Amazon agreed to end its push … Read more