Posts Tagged ‘ Shopping and Classifieds ’
Social commerce and group buying has become increasingly popular these days, on Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Groupon received an investment of $135 million dollars from Digital Sky Technologies. Additionally, last month, another group buying website, LivingSocial, received an investment of $25 million dollars. With investors eager to back companies in this space, [...][ READ MORE ]
The economic downturn in the US had a strong impact upon consumers and resulted in a decline in discretionary spending for nearly two years. However in March, retailers started to report increased sales, signaling that consumer confidence may be increasing and shoppers are willing to start making purchases again. One sector that was among the [...][ READ MORE ]
Shoppers have plenty of gift buying left to do this season according to a survey released by the NRF which found that the average shopper had completed 46.7 percent of their holiday shopping by the second week of December, down 47.1 percent completed by this time last year. With just over two weeks left in [...][ READ MORE ]
Everyone is aware by now about the season’s hottest toy, Zhu Zhu Pets, especially after the brief scare regarding Mr. Squiggles toxicity (he has been fully exonerated). This year’s other runaway hit and hard to find item is the Mindflex game which features a maze where you levitate a ball using your mind (definitely check [...][ READ MORE ]
When you start hearing about doorbuster sales and stores opening at 5 am, it can mean only one thing – Thanksgiving and Black Friday are almost upon us again! Retailers started to promote pre-Black Friday sales as early as late October and have been running sales for much of the month of November, but Friday [...][ READ MORE ]
Holiday projections are out and many are predicting a gloomy holiday season for retailers. The NRF forecasts a 1% decline growth in total retail sales for the 2009 holiday season, totaling $437.6 billion. The online channel is poised to fare somewhat better, with Forrester Research projecting an increase of 8% to $44.7 billion. The official [...][ READ MORE ]
Our sister company Experian CheetahMail released an insightful white paper on the topic of free shipping email offers (download the paper here). Among several interesting findings, the paper provides some seasonality data on the percentage of clients that sent free shipping offers by quarter. “As expected, the sharpest increase occurred at the end of the [...][ READ MORE ]
With many consumers remaining cautious with spending, retailers are turning to layaway programs again this holiday season to offer shoppers a payment plan to buy gifts. In 2008, layaway programs made a comeback as retailers hoped to encourage shoppers to spend during the recession. Searches for the term ‘layaway’ jumped as consumer awareness increased about [...][ READ MORE ]
Amazon announced a deal today to acquire apparel and footwear retailer Zappos.com. The popular online retailer ranked 3rd last week among online retailers within the Apparel and Accessories category behind Victoria’s Secret and Old Navy. Both Amazon and Zappos.com are well-known for the breadth of product offerings, so it is not surprising that they share [...][ READ MORE ]
Far safer than in the physical world where one can be easily bludgeoned by an elbow or shoe, online sample sales have continued to grow in popularity over the past year. Despite the poor economy, shoppers are flocking to the websites of online sample sales like Gilt Groupe, Hautelook, and Rue La La to find [...][ READ MORE ]
