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Shopping Centers Today -> March 2001
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Snap, crackle, click
Consumers may soon be able to design and order cereals to their taste over the Internet. Minneapolis-based General Mills is testing a new Web site, Mycereal.com, in which a limited number of participants are paying about $1 a serving for cereals they concoct over the Internet. "The service is designed to make customized cereals for individual consumers with over 1 million possible combinations versus the 250-plus varieties currently available in grocery stores," according to a quote from the company appearing in iMarketing News, a New York City-based trade magazine. General Mills did not return phone calls.
Royal battle
Bookstores are getting into publishing, and publishers are getting into selling books. Barnesandnoble.com has intensified this bookstore-publisher war by announcing it will not only publish e-books, but will pay authors royalties of 35% for each sale; publishers, which are attempting to bypass retailers by selling their own e-books directly, customarily pay authors 25% for each sale.
Intel’s inside shopping scoop
One new Internet retailing site, developed by San Francisco-based Intel, is making it easier for consumers to shop the old-fashioned way. People looking to buy, say, a VCR can get the information from EyeOnMarket for the exact model, its price and the address of and distance to nearby retailers. Retailers pay to be listed on the network, which is accessible through a variety of portals, and they also receive information on buyers’ shopping habits and competitors’ prices. At press time the company was negotiating a deal with BigFatWow, a Dallas-based firm that installs Internet kiosks in malls. EyeOnMarket’s director of sales and marketing, Mary Ann Butcher, told SCT, "EyeOnMarket empowers retailers and manufacturers to deliver a universal shopping experience to their customers."
Abandon shop
Up to 65% of visitors to online retail sites — belonging to stores and pure plays —are abandoning their shopping carts and leaving, partly because of easily corrected flaws in the design of Web sites, amounting to about $15 billion in lost sales, The Boston Consulting Group, a Boston-based international business consulting firm, told SCT. For instance, shoppers who only learn an item is out of stock halfway through the purchasing process are likely to give up rather than pick a substitute. They also give up if they can only partly fulfill their order, to avoid paying twice for shipping. But don’t expect the abandonment rate to drop below 30%: Often putting an item in the shopping cart is the only way a shopper can find out what shipping will cost.
Outsmarting e-crooks
MasterCard, Purchase, N.Y., plans to make life harder for online credit-card crooks this year by rolling out a smart card. While the numbers on traditional credit cards can be used by thieves, the smart card is embedded with a digital identification code that changes with each use. Consumers are issued a scanning device that they attach to their computers, so they don’t have to type in any numbers at all. The chip is scanned, and its electronic number changes with each transaction. Consequently, the card can only be used by the person possessing it.
Dot gones and goings
The end was very close at press time for eToys, which faced stiff competition
during the holiday season from the Amazon.com/Toysrus.com alliance.
With only enough money to last until the end of this month, the
Los Angeles-based company had ceased its European operations, and
announced it would shut them down entirely by April 6. In other
Internet commerce news, New York City-based Kozmo.com shut down
operations in Houston and San Diego —although it reports its
operations in New York City and San Francisco are profitable, and
that its activities in Washington, D.C.; Boston; and Seattle are
close to turning a profit. And Webvan, the Foster City, Calif.-based
online grocer, is burning $100 million a quarter, reported Forbes.com.
Shopping Centers Today
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