jatiN mahindrA doT coM

Consumers Getting More Comfortable with Mobile Shopping

As you know, smartphone usage is on the rise, and that means more opportunities for businesses to sell to customers via their mobile devices. We often hear about how important mobile is to the marketing strategy and especially future strategies, but how much are consumers really into shopping from their phones? Retrevo shared some findings with us, and concludes that consumers are increasingly warming...

Kaboodle Adds Real-Time Product Search

Online social shopping service Kaboodle said today it is re-launching its website to improve its product-discovery engine. Kaboodle says it has improved its end-user experience by offering real-time product search, which provides the ability to see products that are the most popular based on user-set parameters, such as items from a specific store, within a specific category, and related items. Users...

Online Shoppers Want More Interactivity From Retailers

Consumers want online retailers to be more interactive and offer more personalization features according to a new a survey from IBM. The changing economy has led to a smarter consumer who uses technology to make more informed buying decisions, exchange information with others, make purchases on-the-go and shop multiple channels. More than three-quarters (79%) of consumers want to use websites to access...

Online Retail Sites See Holiday Surge

Online retail websites experienced significant growth in November as the holiday season officially kicked off, according to a new report from comScore. Among the top gaining retail sub-categories were toys, consumer electronics, and department stores, each growing more than 30 percent compared to October. Toys sites attracted 27.4 million Americans during the month, representing a 33-percent increase...

Cyber Monday Sales Reach $887 Million

Cyber Monday sales were up 5 percent compared to a year ago reaching $887 million and matching the heaviest online spending day on record, December 9, 2008, according to the latest report from comScore. "We’ve seen an encouraging start to the online holiday shopping season and it would appear that retailers’ aggressive and early marketing efforts have so far succeeded in persuading...

Grandma got run over by a scammer….

Another holiday has come and gone. The crowds gathered on Black Friday and today the techies drain bandwidth for Cyber Monday. With most readers of Collective Thoughts being tech savvy, I don’t have to break down the dangers of online shopping and scams. However, I would like to encourage everyone to pass on the knowledge. For example, your grandmother or mother (depending on your age), how much...

Online Shoppers Have Bigger Holiday Budgets Than Offline Shoppers

Compete has shared some findings from a new study on consumer holiday shopping behavior. According to the firm, active online buyers (consumers who intend to spend over 30% of their holiday budgets online) have bigger budgets than other shoppers. Furthermore, they are more likely to spend that money on Black Friday. The study shows that "active online buyers" plan to spend twice as much...

Holiday Shoppers Want Deals Even More Than They Did Last Year

Google has used its Insights for Search tool to provide some data about consumers’ searching behavior when it comes to things like discounts, free shipping for the holidays, coupons, and promotional codes. Unsurprisingly, there is an uptick in searches for all of these things, indicating that this is the stuff consumers are after for their holiday shopping. Such data serves as a great indicator...

More People Relying On The Internet To Buy Vehicles

Searching online for used vehicles has become the primary way for consumers to locate used automobiles, according to new a report by J.D. Power and Associates. The report found the percentage of used-vehicle buyers who rely on the Internet as a way for locating vehicles for sale has increased from 40 percent in 2008 to 46 percent in 2009, equal to the percentage of buyers who visit dealer lots as their...

Amazon Completes Acquisition of Zappos

Update: Amazon announced the completion of its acquisition of Zappos.com today. The Zappos management team will remain intact, and Zappos will operate independently with its headquarters in Las Vegas. Original Article: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh sent an email to Zappos employees today informing them that Amazon is becoming the only shareholder of Zappos stock. The following video from Jeff Bezos was also...

More People Plan To Shop Online During The Holidays

 More people plan to shop online during the holiday season this year (55%) compared to last year (49%), according to a new survey by MarketLive and the E-Tailing Group. More than a quarter (26%) of shoppers plan to buy more gifts online, up from 21 percent last year. Eighty-five percent of consumers report the main reason for shopping online is still time savings, but 40 and 38 percent of shoppers...

Consumers Can Now Get Billed Later for eBay Purchases

eBay and PayPal announced today that they are now offering Bill Me Later as a payment option during checkout. This means that "qualified" customers in the U.S. can now buy items and pay for them over time without using a credit card. The option will be available for Buy It Now and approved auction purchases on eBay. It is also available at "tens of thousands" of online stores that...

Majority Of Consumers Will Shop Online During The Holidays

More than half (62.8%) of consumers plans to spend the same or cut back on their holiday purchases compared to 2008, according to a new survey by Burst Media. Although consumers plan to be thrifty with their spending this holiday season, the majority (85.3%) will shop online. With the current economic concerns, the survey found only 14.6 percent of respondents plan to spend more this holiday season...

Ask Introduces New Deal Feature

Ask.com has added a new feature to its search engine homepage designed to help online shoppers find the best deals on the Web. The IAC owned property has introduced "Ask Deals," a proprietary database of more than 1 million savings offers from national and local retailers across hundreds of product categories. The Ask homepage now features a new tab labeled "Deals" for users who...

Coupon Site Reports Big Growth for Online Sales

Ebates, a site that many big-name brands offer rebates and coupons through, released its online retail report for August, finding that online sales through the site grew 57% during the month, compared to the same time period a year ago. The categories that showed the biggest growth were: department stores, baby % kids, books & magazines, apparel & shoes, and health & beauty. In fact, only...