by Christina Lee on January 21st, 2009
As retail experts analyzed slumping holiday retail sales, they quickly placed part of the blame on the shorter shopping season, with five less days between Thanksgiving and Christmas than in 2007. However, as a recent study finds, 2008’s online consumers actually browsed more, prolonging the season for more than as seen in years.
According to Oneupweb, a search engine and marketing company, the week of Halloween, Oct. 27 to Nov. 2, became the biggest for sales and conversion rates of the holiday season – indicating that customers began shopping even earlier. Returns, gift cards and after-Christmas bargains then led to... Read more »
by Christina Lee on November 14th, 2008
Though the Internet will remain a popular destination for shoppers this holiday season, fewer retailers expect their sales to increase significantly, according to a recent survey.
The National Retail Federation found that the number of consumers shopping online – 44.2 percent – has remained almost flat since last year. In the meantime however, compared to 77.5 percent of retailers last year, only 56.1 percent of them expect holiday sales to increase by at least 15 percent.
In addition, the Internet will continue to influence an increasing number of holiday purchases – at least 33.6 percent this year, compared to 30.2... Read more »
by Rebecca Button on May 14th, 2008
To follow up with my previous post Internet Sales Tax Looms for NY…Will It Catch On? I posed a question along the lines of "do you think it should happen/is it a good idea?"
As of June 1, 2008, the legislation will go into effect, requiring internet retailers to collect a sales tax on any orders being shipped to the state’s residents. This legislation was largely enacted to keep online retail Goliaths (namely Amazon.com) in check and attempt to "level the playing field" for brick and mortar stores in the state.
Amazon has now responded by suing the New York... Read more »