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E-shoppers prefer stores

Web shoppers — 82 percent of them, to be exact — prefer buying from stores rather than over the Internet, according to a report by technology information firm Forrester Research. While they spend on average $92 a month online, they fork over $256 at stores, which is where they say they find the best prices. It’s no surprise, then, that retailers will be offering their best deals in stores this holiday season, and that shoppers will see fewer incentives, such as free shipping, at Internet retail sites, Forrester says.

Fashionably late

Some big luxury names have finally entered the e-tail world of late, or they are about to. Burberry has started selling on a Web site and, according to The Wall Street Journal, Salvatore Ferragamo was set to do the same at press time. They join other luxury e-tailers, such as Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys New York, as recent e-rrivals.

 

“... and a grande CD, please”

Starbucks has added kiosks — it’s calling them “music bars” — to cafés in Seattle and in Austin, Texas, where customers can burn seven songs onto a CD for $8.99. The company plans to extend the service to all its 8,300 stores. “We know coffee is going to bring in the traffic, and the music is going to keep them there,” Starbucks Senior Vice President President Kenneth T. Lombard recently told analysts.

 

Stubbed out?

A federal judge slapped a $17 million fine on Otamedia, a Switzerland-based Internet cigarette retailer (www.yesmoke.ch) for failing to answer a civil lawsuit over taxes brought by New York City, reports The New York Post. “It’s an elusive company,” the city’s lawyer, Eric Proshansky, told the Post. But, he pledged, “we’ll find out where they are and collect the judgment.”

 

Tricky clickers

The Web can be a dodgy place to advertise, according to a recent New York Times article. Advertisers pay many sites according to the number of clicks an ad receives. Thus, to increase their commissions, shady sites are employing people and software to click on ads. Unscrupulous merchants are clicking on these sites too, the article says, in an effort to drain their rivals’ ad coffers. One firm that helps retailers root out fraudulent clickers says “click fraud” costs its clients $10 million a year.

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