- Mark Levin Signs Multi-year Deal with ABC, Expands Show to 3 Hours
- Consumerist.com Adopted by Old-School Consumers Union, Stops Selling Ads
- For Auto Industry, 2009 Holds Even Tighter Ad Budgets
- User-Generated Magazine Publisher 8020 Media Shuts Doors
- Out-of-Home, Fueled by Digital, to Weather Recession Well
- Clear Channel Swaps Cincy Stations for Five in Green Bay
- Consumers Swarm to Discounters for Grocery Items, Don’t Switch Back
- Wikimedia Raises $6.2M to Keep Wikipedia Afloat
- Conde Nast’s Jan. Ad Pages Slip More than Most
- Aegis Faces Possible Sale or Spin-off of Non-core Businesses
- Top US Cities for Charitable Givers, by Category
- Online Fitness, Video Game Spending Outperforms Brick-And-Mortar
- RIM Must Fix Glitches, Boost Satisfaction To Hold Off iPhone
- LCD TV Revenue to Fall YoY for First Time Ever
- Top 10 Broadcast Media Websites - November 2008
- Top 10 Entertainment Online Advertisers by Image-Based Impressions - November 2008
- Top 10 Sports Websites - November 2008
- Eight in 10 Online Holiday Shoppers Read Web Reviews
- Top 40 Online Retail Satisfaction Index: Merry Outlook for Some, but Not Others
- Firefox Share Tops 20% in November
Customer Experience
Customer Reviews Are Here to Stay
As online shoppers continue to turn to one another for advice on what to buy, businesses are finding out the benefits of incorporating customer reviews on their sites, writes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
“It is as if all online shoppers have an instant community of friends, recommending the good and warning about the bad,” observed Michal Ann Strahilevitz, marketing professor at San...
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Top 40 Online Retail Satisfaction Index: Merry Outlook for Few
Some online retailers will thrive in 2009, while others have an uphill battle ahead, if customer satisfaction with top retail websites during the holiday season is any indication.
Amazon and Netflix continued to delight holiday shoppers online while customer satisfaction with websites for Circuit City, Gap, Home Depot, HSN, Neiman Marcus, and Overstock fell below industry standards, according...
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Short Shopping Season, Winter Weather Result in Deep Discounts
When times are tougher—and the holiday-shopping season (five days) shorter—than usual, retailers are resorting to staying open later, even for 24 hours a day, and dropping prices to post-Christmas levels.
The Toys “R” Us flagship store in NY, along with Macy’s, H&M, L.L. Bean, Wal-Mart Stores, and others have been open day and night or otherwise extended their hours to capture as many shoppers...
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Shoppers Avoid E-Tailers with Bad Online Reviews
Most shoppers (89%) say they purposely stay away from small online retailers with negative customer reviews on the web, according to a survey from 1&1 Internet conducted by MaCorr Research (via Marketing Charts).
Overall, however, consumers feel comfortable using small “e-tailers.” Among those consumers who had made purchases online, 96% say they had a positive experience with a small online...
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‘Consistently Mediocre’ Quality Better than ‘Inconsistently Amazing’ in Boosting Sales
As retailers make their final push to boost holiday sales in a down economy, those that demonstrate consistency—even if mediocre—in product quality are more likely to register higher sales than those that don’t, even if they sometimes do very well, according to P.J. Lamberson, a visiting professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
He found that “being consistently mediocre is better than...
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Green Consumers Still Willing to Pay More for Natural and Organic Products
Despite a tough economic outlook, green consumers are willing to pay more for green and environmentally friendly products in 2008, according to a recent MamboTrack study by Mambo Sprouts Marketing.
Some 1,000 natural-product consumers were surveyed and forecast their expected purchases for the coming year.
Among the survey findings:
Most natural consumers said they would pay more for...Continue Reading »
Macy’s Stores to Stay Open 24 Hours
Thirteen Macy’s stores will be open 24 hours a day through Christmas Eve, including stores in Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Illinois, reports the Chicago Tribune.
The retailer first tested the open-all-night store concept in 2006 in Queens, NY, and last year undertook several such efforts, expanding it further this year.
Just 15% of shoppers had completed their...
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Retailers, Hotels Top Forrester’s Customer Experience Ranking
Only 11% of companies garnered a rating of “excellent” in this year’s Customer Experience Index of large US firms, released by Forrester Research, Inc., and 38% of firms were rated as “poor” or “very poor.” Barnes & Noble and USAA topped Forrester’s ranking, while Charter Communications and Medicaid received the lowest score.
At an industry level, retailers and hotels ended in the top spots of...
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Consumers Want Personal, Online Interaction with Brands
Nearly one-third (62%) of consumers say that direct and personal communication with a company’s online brand representative is preferable to ads or promotional materials from the company, according to research conducted by OTX Research on behalf of DEI Worldwide, MarketingCharts reports.
The word-of-mouth marketing research study, titled The Impact of Social Media on Purchase Behavior (pdf),...
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Target, Best Buy, Get in on the Mobile App Craze
Since the introduction of Apple’s App Store this summer, mobile apps have become a hot item—and some retailers are capitalizing on their popularity to drive sales and increase customer satisfaction.
Target, for example, launched the Target Gift Globe—built by AKQA—to help iPhone-toting shoppers pick gifts for friends and family, writes Internet Retailer.
After opening the app, they select age,...
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