Shopping Centers Today -> December 2001
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Fewer people will be traveling this holiday season in the wake of
the terrorist attacks, and those who do will be reluctant to bring
parcels with them, all of which will mean more gifts sent via online
retailers, researchers say. Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass.,
emerging technologies research firm, is standing by the $11 billion
in Internet retail sales it forecast for the four weeks between
Thanksgiving and Christmas, even though it made the prediction before
the Sept. 11 atrocities. That represents a 10 percent increase over
the same period last year. (Brick-and-mortar retailers with online
operations are expected to benefit in particular from this.) In
contrast, traditional retail sales will increase only 2 percent,
according to the Washington, D.C.-based National Retail Federation,
which before Sept. 11 had predicted a 4 percent rise.
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
It could be said that giant dot-com failures such as Webvan have provided
a model for the successful Seattle Traders Web store that Tim and
Pat Jewett, until recently, ran out of their home: a model to avoid,
that is. They’ve eschewed running up debt, they’ve kept
their staff small — four, at press time — they are right
there when customers call with a question and they don’t pad
their shipping costs. The business, which since 1996 has sold an eclectic
collection of cookware, health equipment and outdoor gear, has seen
a 10-fold visitor and 33 percent sales increase in the last year.
“We stick to a real traditional business plan,” Brad Wright,
its Web development manager, told
SCT. “We keep our debts
low, everyone in the office here works real hard and we wear a lot
of different hats.” The company recently opened a store in downtown
Seattle so that people can also see and buy the merchandise the old-fashioned
way.
RETAILERS RESPINNING WEB SITES
Several online retailers have scrambled to make their Web sites
easier to use in time for the Christmas rush, including Sears, Roebuck
& Co.; Jos. A. Bank; Amazon; and RadioShack. Nobody wants to repeat
the online debacles of Christmases past, especially now that there
is more competition in cyberspace, warns Vividence Corp., a San
Mateo, Calif.-based retail consulting firm. Retailers must pay attention
to product availability, ease of use, site performance and other
issues that help attract and retain customers, Blake Wise, senior
marketing manager at Vividence, told
SCT. Above all, with
more customers than ever shopping online this year, retailers cannot
afford to lose them, especially in a shrinking economy. “These
things are really important.”
IT’S THE VIRTUAL GIFT THAT COUNTS
Procrastinators who miss the postal deadline for mailing gifts in
time for Christmas no longer need fear their names will be mud:
While www.onlinegiftdelivery.com won’t deliver the present,
it will provide an e-note and even a picture of the item to the
recipient in time. Several retailers, including Bass Pro Shops and
Lowe’s Home Improvement Stores, are putting a link to the service
on their Web sites. “There’s no reason for people’s
feelings to be hurt if the present didn’t arrive,” founder
and CEO David MacMahan said. More to the point, there’s no
reason for people to abandon online shopping carts after realizing
a gift won’t arrive in time, which is why retailers —
not the procrastinators — pay for the service.
NEIN DANKE
The British are far bolder than Germans about providing credit card
information online, according to a survey by NFO Infratest, a Munich,
Germany-based market research company. While 70 percent of British
shoppers are willing to send their credit card numbers into cyberspace,
only 15 percent of Germans are happy to do so.
