Shopping Centers Today -> June 2003
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MALL BRAWL.COM
There has been intense rivalry between Taubman Centers and Forest
City Enterprises over the open-air center each is opening in Richmond,
Va. (Taubman has gone to court to block — unsuccessfully, so
far — a financing deal between Forest City and Henrico County.)
And though neither project is due to open until September, the developers
are already competing on Web sites that they have created. A list
of stores and restaurants that will inhabit Forest City’s Short
Pump Town Center (opening Sept. 4) can be found at
www.shortpumpmall.com,
plus an invitation to join its “VIPreference Club.” Taubman
lists similar information about Stony Point Fashion Park (which opens
Sept. 18) at
www.shopstonypoint.com,
tempting visitors to register with a chance to win a $1,000 certificate
for a shopping spree.
FROM NAPSTER TO MACSTER
Apple
Computer delivered another blow to conventional music
stores last month. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company introduced
an online music service allowing customers to download songs from
the catalogs of the big record labels onto their computers and then
onto the iPod portable player. The deal between Apple and the record
labels might be good for the latter, who are losing out to free
online music-sharing services, such as KaZaA, but it will increase
pressure on music specialty retailers, whose sales plummeted 10.7
percent last year, in part because of Internet downloading.
MINISTER OF MISINFORMATION
The outlandish war commentary of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the former
Iraqi information minister, is now making money for Kieran Mulvaney,
an Anchorage, Alaska, writer, and his
www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com
Website. It sells products that include a coffee mug that reads
“No American will ever pour coffee into this mug! Never!”
and T-shirts stating “There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!”
WHEELS AND DEALS
People buying cars over the Internet not only avoid having to dicker
with car salesmen, but they also save money. So says research by
three academics using data from J.D. Power & Associates, a marketing
information services firm, and
Autobytel,
which links buyers to selected dealers. Studies have shown that
women, minorities and those lacking bargaining skills often pay
more for vehicles from dealerships than white males with the ability
to bargain. But there was no such discrepancy with deals done over
the Internet, said the study, which was reported by
The New York
Times. Online buyers pay 2 percent less on average than those
venturing into dealerships, the study says.
CLICKS AND FLICKS
Blockbuster
says it will begin letting people rent tapes and DVDs over the
Internet, following in the footsteps of
Walmart.com
and
Netflix,
reports
The New York Times. Blockbuster, which is 80 percent
owned by Viacom, will send titles from selected stores among its
more than 8,500 company-owned and franchised units around the
United States, rather than using centralized warehouses.
