Shopping Centers Today -> January 2004
 PRINT THIS STORY:
|
  CHANGE TEXT SIZE: |
AS SEEN ON TV
Turner Broadcasting System has gone an extra step for its advertisers,
setting up an online mall (
www.turnershop.com)
that gives viewers a one-stop location to buy products featured
in commercials. TBS, which gets a cut of sales made through the
site, is advertising the mall on all its networks, including CNN,
TNT and Turner South.
DID SOMEONE SAY ‘E-BOOK’?
Though music downloading is all the rage, the same can’t be said
of book downloading.
Barnesandnoble.com
has stopped selling e-books, and Gemstar got out of the e-book retailing
business last year. According to Open eBook Forum, a nonprofit consortium,
the market is only worth about $10 million a year, reports
The
New York Sun. However, all is not lost. A group of 15 Japanese
companies have formed Publishing Link, an initiative that will enable
people to download e-books using the technology of one of the venture’s
biggest investors: Sony.
FOIE GRAS ANYONE?
Amazon.com’s
new Gourmet Food Store is providing national exposure for scores
of hitherto local specialized food shops around the United States.
The site, which at press time was experimental but live, offers
everything from game to cheeses, coffees to chocolate. “The
more you get your name out there, the better,” Mike Holleman,
catalog manager at Bemidji, Minn.-based Indian Harvest told the
Minneapolis, Minn.,
Star Tribune.
REGISTERING COMPLAINTS
Online gift registries are failing to deliver the goods to both
stores and customers, according to technology research firm Jupitermedia
Corp. In a recent survey, only about 10 percent of online customers
said their purchases are influenced by these online wish lists,
according to a report in
The New York Times. “It’s
an underutilized option, Jupitermedia analyst Patty Freeman Evans
told the
Times. “People are reluctant to say, ‘Buy
me this.’”
FRAUD DOWN
In a survey some 333 merchants said they expected to lose
about 1.7 percent of their revenues to fraud by year-end 2003,
compared with 2.9 percent the year before, says CyberSource
Corp., an online payment technology firm. Despite the drop,
that loss still adds up to $1.6 billion. And any savings might
be more than offset by the amount merchants are spending on
loss-prevention, the report says.
|
ENTER WAL-MART ...
If music downloaders have struck fear into the hearts of music retailers,
now a retailer is doing the same to some of those in the downloading
industry. Wal-Mart, which already controls 14 percent of music sales,
has launched an online music store (
www.walmart.com)..
ONLINE HOLIDAY CHEER UP
Online holiday sales for 2003 were set to reach $17 billion, a 21
percent rise over the 2002 holiday, Jupiter Research, a division of
Jupitermedia Corp., predicted shortly before the holidays. UPS figured
it would be delivering 300 million packages over the holiday. Consumer
confidence in online shopping has also risen, with fewer people voicing
concerns in 2003 about credit card fraud, Jupiter said.
