- 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
Tools & Software
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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‘Wal-Mart’s Worst Nightmare’
British megaretailer Tesco is challenging Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, on its home turf, the US—though Wal-Mart is fighting back using Tesco’s own tactics, writes BusinessWeek.
Wal-Mart countered Tesco’s Nov. 2007 launch of Fresh & Easy—a chain of 10,000 sq. ft. convenience stores in California, Nevada, and Arizona—with its own similar-format Marketside, in Arizona.
Still, “Tesco is...
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Coupons.com Launches Facebook Coupons
Facebook users looking for ways to cut costs on groceries, toys, and other household items by using coupons can now do so with a printable couponing application from Coupons.com, the company announced.
The application, ”Coupons.com for Facebook,” enables users to print and share coupons with friends, directly from their Facebook profile page. It was developed by Context Optional.
Each week,...
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X-Ray ‘Guns’ Detect Lead in Toys
“Guerrilla” toy testers have used technology like X-ray guns to take to stores looking for toys containing unsafe levels of lead and other chemicals, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The Center for Environmental Health (CEH), a consumer advocacy group in Oakland, CA, for instance, zapped frog-charm jewelry sold at Wal-Mart and found that it contained levels of lead higher than allowed by...
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Tesco Tool Eco-Screens In-Store Materials
UK retail giant Tesco has developed software that gives the company and its suppliers an unbiased assessment of the materials and products used in stores, writes Retail Week (via Environmental Leader).
To use the “Environmental Design Tool,” employees enter the weight of the materials that make up a particular product. The software then considers factors such as carbon footprint, recycled...
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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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Fraudsters Filch $4B Online; Record Fraud Losses for US E-commerce
Merchants expect to lose a record $4 billion to online fraud in 2008 and say they think the fraud loss rate will hold constant at 1.4% of revenue (same as 2007 and 2006), according to the tenth annual CyberSource Corporation survey of e-commerce fraud, released Wednesday.
Continuing growth in e-commerce sales mean, however, that dollar losses to fraud are still growing.
Among the key takeaways...
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Tool Helps Retailers Find New Keywords
Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool—a way for online retailers to identify relevant, frequently searched-for terms outside of Google’s paid AdWords program—is now in beta.
The tool scans pages for words that match up with terms that have been searched for in the past year on all of Google’s search properties (e.g., Google.com, Google.co.uk), writes Internet Retailer.
Retailers can compare the...
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Retail Sales Marred by Web-Performance Issues, Browser Wars
With the market and retailers nervous about sales and shoppers scouring the web for bargains, it’s no time for website outages or slowdowns—but many of the largest brands disappointed potential shoppers on Cyber Monday.
The websites of Dell, Victoria’s Secret and Williams-Sonoma, among others, had performance issues during the morning of Cyber Monday, causing them to lose sales opportunities and...
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Class Project Turns into E-Retail Site
A business plan that arose from a Northern Illinois University class is being used to sell liquidated merchandise on a deal-of-the-day website that sells items 40-80% cheaper than the big retail chains, writes Internet Retailer.
UWantSavings.com is “shamelessly modeled” after Woot.com, which offers one deal per day. Today, for example, visitors to the site can purchase a Lyon by Washburn...
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