In its second deal in as many weeks, China’s largest e-commerce company will pay $294 million for a 28 percent stake in Internet mapping company AutoNavi Holdings Ltd., AutoNavi said in a statement Friday. The two companies will also cooperate and combine their data to develop e-commerce products that make use of the actual location of smartphone users.

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Accel Partners has added longtime tech exec Rob Solomon — who was most recently president and CEO of Groupon — as a venture partner. The high-profile Silicon Valley venture firm said Solomon will focus on early stage and growth equity opportunities and focus on “operational issues like product management, scaling infrastructure, business operations, and mergers and acquisitions.”

Said Accel Partner Andrew Braccia in a statement: “[Solomon] has been at the helm of some of the most high profile consumer internet brands and has demonstrated a unique ability to inspire and lead teams through both rapid growth and challenging times.”

Indeed, Solomon has had a long Silicon Valley career, including as an top exec at Yahoo, running its e-commerce efforts. He was also CEO of SideStep, a real-time vertical search engine in the travel sector that was later sold to Kayak and is also on several boards, including HomeAway.

But Solomon is best known for his stint as the No. 2 exec at the Chicago-based Groupon, the once high-flying daily deals site. But, for a variety of reasons, including wanting to be located in California, he left the company two years ago.

Solomon emailed me last night to explain why he decided to take a job as a VC at Accel and here’s what he wrote:

“I love the tactics and strategies associated with scaling up Internet companies. Nothing is more exciting then digging deep into a space and then figuring out which companies stand the best chance to create new markets and become iconic category defining companies. I was lucky enough to work with some of the world’s best founders, technologists and executives at Yahoo and that experience taught me what is possible in a very short span of time. I’ve joined Accel because they have an incredible global platform to find, nurture, fund and grow the next generation of global iconic Internet companies and nothing could be more exciting to me for my next career adventure.”

The e-commerce giant reported a profit of $82 million, or 18 cents a share, down from $130 million, or 28 cents a share, a year earlier.

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At Square, Brougher will be charged with overseeing the commerce startup’s growth across revenue products, handling the company’s expansion into international and emerging markets and working on business development partnerships with other companies.

“Francoise is a perfect fit for Square,” said Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Square, in a statement. “Her accomplishments in growing and managing large, global teams, and her focus on building simple, scalable solutions that empower millions of people, will have a huge impact on our company and our customers.”

Brougher was most recently the VP of SMB global sales and ops at Google. Essentially, this is Square taking on someone who has lots of experience in growing the long-tail SMB base for a company. Pretty important for a startup like Square, which thrives on recruiting small- and medium-sized businesses over to using its payments platform.

“We are grateful to Francoise for her contributions to Google and wish her the best in her new role,” a Google spokesperson told AllThingsD.

Prior to her work at Google, Brougher was VP of business strategy at Charles Schwab and Co. in the U.S. and Europe, and did a stint as a management consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, among other positions.

SoftBank Capital and Yahoo Japan said they had created an unusual $20 million fund to help U.S. startups break into the Japanese market, while also upping a presence in the U.S.

The partnership between Japan’s largest Internet company — which is also a joint venture with Yahoo — and the venture arm of the giant SoftBank Corp. will invest in companies from early-stage funding to later-stage expansion and focus on mobile applications, social media, e-commerce, online advertising, gaming and cloud computing.

The new funds for that are being put into SoftBank Capital’s $100 million Technology Fund ’10. As part of the deal, Toshiaki Chiku will become head of U.S. operations in Manhattan. SoftBank Capital also recently announced a $250 million PrinceVille Fund, aimed at growth-stage startups in Asia.

Among the firm’s recent exits: Bluefin Labs went to Twitter, Buddy Media to Salesforce.com, Huffington Post to AOL, Hyperpublic to Groupon and OMGPOP to Zynga.

Now, it will be focusing even more on helping U.S. startups in Asia.

“Japan can be challenging for many U.S. companies, and given our scale and affiliation with SoftBank Corp., we’re in a great position to help them grow and succeed,” said Chiku in a statement.

SoftBank Capital and Yahoo Japan used performance display advertising company Criteo as an example of a successful investment, in which it also helped the company enter the Asian market (although, technically, Criteo is HQed in France).

Going back through the period before the financial crisis, the e-commerce giant consistently topped the guidance it gave to Wall Street, though that didn’t always translate into a short-term gain for the stock. In the long run, however, eBay has rewarded investors handsomely even after its heady rise during the dot-com boom. Over the past decade, the stock has risen 2½ times faster than the S&P 500.

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We are thrilled to welcome Jason Del Rey to the staff of AllThingsD, where the accomplished reporter will be covering e-commerce.

That includes such critical companies as Amazon, Groupon, eBay and the fast-growing online payments business, as well the escalation of the Internet of Things and the continued mashup of the offline and online worlds.

Del Rey is perfectly suited to the task, having been a business journalist since 2007, when he joined Inc. magazine in order to write about startups and fast-growing small businesses across all industries.

He was most recently a reporter at Advertising Age, where he covered older digital media companies such as Yahoo and AOL, and upstarts such as BuzzFeed and Gawker Media.

Del Rey has also worked as the executive editor of Open Forum, a Web publication for small business owners and entrepreneurs. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

The entire AllThingsD staff is thrilled to welcome Jason, who will be starting in two weeks.

The once-beleaguered e-commerce company also forecast a big jump in revenue by 2015. EBay expects to report between $21.5 billion and $23.5 billion in revenue for 2015, compared with $14 billion last year.

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While the Théâtrophone was an impressive invention in its day, the subscription model itself has a prolific and fascinating history of enabling innovation throughout the world. Subscriptions have helped companies pioneer new distribution models across a diverse set of business applications; all in the name of seeking efficient annuity revenue streams that outweigh the cost of production and distribution. From an end-customer “subscriber” perspective, the convenience of easy access or repeat consumption can greatly outweigh the incremental cost of subscribing.

Subscriptions have historically also found ways to take on greater social meaning through the signaling of a certain status by way of access to a secret society, social club or charitable organization. In the 1700s, by “subscribing” to become a benefactor to a charitable organization or society, individuals were able to achieve certain significance among their peers. Subscriptions to charity balls and full-seasons of theatre access were as much of a status symbol as they were convenient. Country clubs, yacht clubs, athletic clubs, fraternities and other private clubs have almost always been entirely member funded by way of the subscription membership model. Memberships, dues, donations and even tithing from the Catholic Church were achieved via scheduled “subscription” payments.

During the 18th century, the notion of subscription that we know today arrived when subscriptions to periodicals, magazines, books and theatre events became common. These subscriptions typically included delivery of the printed material and were sold for a specified number of issues or a period of time.

During the 1800s, the idea of pay-as-you-go subscriptions emerged to support the need for staple items such as heating oil, coal, milk, ice and even diapers to be delivered to your home. In Paris, a five-franc annual tariff was levied on all residents for their “subscription” to a hectoliter of drinking water per day.

Throughout history, we observe some interesting commonality across each of these examples. Whether we’re talking about subscriptions for the purpose of convenience, pay-as-you-go consumption, engagement or status, the underlying business driver has always been that subscriptions provide the ability to generate capital in the form of an attractive annuity revenue stream. From a financial perspective, companies that are able to generate a growing audience of subscribers producing predictable revenue streams are far more capital-efficient than companies that need to acquire, and then re-acquire, each customer interaction. (If you’re ever curious about this assertion, just ask yourself why so many insurance companies occupy the largest buildings across all major cities in the United States.² By definition, insurance is an annuity-based, subscription business.)

Fast forward to today. We are in the midst of yet another explosive expansion of subscription business models. From traditional media moving to digital media, to the rapid adoption of SaaS and cloud-based businesses, mobile and social products, applications and services are all careening toward some form of subscription-based offering. This is largely because the cost of developing and launching new businesses has declined to such an extent that it requires a very different level of up-front capital investment to chase these opportunities.

Why are subscription models everywhere today? The following intersection of trends is powering the recent appeal for subscriptions:

From the business perspective, there has always been a strong appeal in creating a predictable stream of revenue. Beyond that, the notion of maximizing lifetime value from existing customers is something that has always existed, but is now enabled through better visibility into activity. Traditional e-commerce companies like eBay have long focused on optimizing the “Triple A’s” — Acquisition, Activation and Activity. With today’s technology in place, we now have the ability to solve for all of these variables in a way that is not only more palatable to the end customer, but in many respects the optimization is couched in a way that is actually a benefit to the customer. (Think about the recent reminders you’ve likely received from your oil changer, dentist or even hair stylist that it is time for you to come back for your next appointment.)

Consumers have evolved a long way from the cable and magazine subscriber of yesterday as well. Today, consumers expect to have a range of choice in their offerings. They’ll commit to subscribe particularly if they have the ability to select from a range of feature/pricing options that best suit their own preferences.

There exists a psychological minimum. If a service is offered at a price level that feels low enough in relation to the marginal benefit that they receive, a consumer will subscribe. Conversely, they will elect to cancel if the marginal benefit wanes and is no longer worth the cost to continue subscribing. Managing the perceived value of any subscription product or service over time creates a relationship between the consumer and the service provider, each of whom seeks to maximize the value they are receiving from the other.

At the same time, the upfront capital investment required to launch a new enterprise service has declined to such an extent that it affords businesses a greater opportunity to test and learn as they go. As recently as 10 or 12 years ago, during the first dot-com boom, companies raised massive amounts of money not only to signal a coveted first-mover market position, but also to fund the huge amount of investment required to scale out a company. Today, we have cloud services and SaaS/PaaS offerings like Amazon Web Services and RackSpace.

The Web has become too fragmented to sustain ad-only revenue models.
Ten years ago, venture capitalists were inundated with companies seeking funding for ad-supported business models. Today, the Web is far too fragmented to support businesses seeking to aggregate massive ad dollars.

There has been a 100X reduction in the cost of software infrastructure within 10 years.
Here is an example: In just over 10 years, the “rented” application infrastructure model once offered by Kontiki (before it was called SaaS/PaaS) would have cost a customer approximately $100,000 per month to launch a business. Today, the same offering is delivered by Amazon Web Services for approximately $1,000 per month.

The cost of storage has plummeted 16X in the last 10 years.
Today, it costs you $0.085 per GB to store data. Ten years ago, it cost $1.39/GB. This decline in storage costs has created the opportunity for subscription-based file-sharing and backup companies like Box.net and Dropbox.³

The cost of Internet bandwidth “transit” has declined 75X in the past 10 years.
Entirely new business models have emerged due to the proliferation of inexpensive and ubiquitous broadband connectivity. This has allowed companies like Hulu and Netflix to have distribution to large markets at economically sustainable rates.⁴

Open-source software has eliminated the need for expensive licenses.
Ten years ago, companies aiming to deliver a service at scale were likely to sign up for expensive Oracle and Microsoft licenses. Today, startups have an impressive roster of free open-source software to choose from to run their operations.

On the Web today, the confluence of these trends is creating new markets and opportunities. The functional role of marketing has evolved to become increasingly data-driven.

Financial CRM allows the consumer to get what they want, and the business to provide a well-crafted migration path of high-probability options for cross-sell and up-sell options in the future. The management of this path for monetizing users post-sale has become an even more critical discipline for maximizing enterprise profitability than the sexy and creative brand-building efforts on which companies have traditionally focused.

All of these factors combined increasingly lead entrepreneurs to a similar conclusion. It is now far more efficient to offer products and services via subscriptions. Subscription pricing easily attracts customers, eliminates their purchase anxiety and, if designed well, keeps them happily paying over a longer period of time. Subscription models not only allow for attractive and efficient pricing, but also alleviate the need for a heavy-handed sales pitch. Ultimately, customers appreciate that they are in more control — always having the ability to upgrade their service, or to cancel and move on to something better.

Based in San Francisco, Dan Burkhart is the CEO and co-founder of subscription billing service Recurly, Inc. He was also an executive at eBay and NBC Internet.

Alibaba Group said it had selected Jonathan Lu Zhaoxi to replace its co-founder and CEO Jack Ma, starting on May 10. Ma, who is only 48 years old, will remain executive chairman, and will be involved in the Chinese Internet e-commerce giant’s business strategy and management development. Alibaba has seen tremendous growth in the last year, as it is has increased both its revenue and profit, and many expect it will go public within the next 12 months. The strong performance has, in turn, boosted the stock of Yahoo, which owns a 20 percent stake in the company.

Lu, 43, has been at Alibaba for more than a dozen years, leading major divisions of the company, including its massive and important Taobao unit. He is currently Alibaba’s chief data officer and president of Aliyun Mobile OS.

“Serving as Alibaba Group CEO is an extremely challenging and difficult job, especially succeeding a founder CEO like me. One can only imagine the responsibilities and pressure that Jonathan will shoulder,” said Ma in a letter to employees. “Alibaba has never been only the CEO’s business, it is everybody’s business.”

Here’s Ma’s full letter to employees on the change:
alibaba

And here is some of Lu’s bio, according to Alibaba:

Lu joined Alibaba in 2000, a year after the company was founded as an Internet directory allowing China’s increasingly competitive factories to more easily connect with international buyers. After forming Alibaba.com’s sales team for South China, including manufacturing powerhouse Guangdong Province, Lu in 2004 led the launch of Alipay, the company’s online payments affiliate. He later served as Alipay’s president.

In early 2008 Lu moved to Taobao, China’s dominant online retailing platform. During his tenure Taobao’s GMV (total sales generated by sellers using the platform) soared eightfold, and the online shopping unit began developing and integrating social networking into e-commerce.

Lu, who holds a master’s degree in business administration from China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, was named chief executive officer of Alibaba.com in early 2011, presiding over the privatization of the business-to-business trading website the following year.

Since July 2012, Lu has been an Alibaba executive vice president and the Group’s chief data officer. In this role, he has been responsible for driving the company’s strategically important Big Data initiative, centered on the creation of a data-sharing platform that can be accessed by the millions of small businesses that use Alibaba services. He is also responsible for Alibaba’s Aliyun mobile device operating system.

But investors in recent years found a solution they like, plowing money into real-estate investment trusts that own the buildings housing the server computers that run websites. REITs pay out 90% of their pre-tax income in the form of dividends. So, despite heavy expenses on land and property, many investors consider it sort of a sure thing that these outfits will continually lever up and return money to shareholders.

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The company’s opposition to the proposal is a little surprising, since the bill itself would not substantially change the way it conducts business. But eBay is arguing that it could affect the lives of some of its largest marketplace sellers.

“No small business should face new taxes,” said Brian Bieron, eBay’s senior director of global public policy. “There’s no benefit compared to the harm that would be done.”

The Marketplace Fairness Act, reintroduced to the Senate this week, will allow states to collect sales tax online, as long as they have simplified their tax laws.

Hundreds of companies support the proposal, including Amazon, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Gap, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, REI, Sears, Target and Walmart. Many brick-and-mortar retailers, in particular, are throwing their weight behind it because they believe that, for years now, Amazon has had an unfair advantage because it did not collect sales tax at the time of purchase.

The two organizations listed as being in opposition are eBay and the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, according to materials supplied by the supporters. Other organizations, however, are against the bill.

EBay says it worries about the law’s impact on small businesses in particular. If passed, retailers that have less than $1 million in out-of-state sales in the prior calendar year can apply for exemption.

But Bieron says that number is not nearly high enough and is completely arbitrary. He says that the U.S. Small Business Administration has definitions for what constitutes a small business, and that it has determined that a company that deals in “electronic shopping” is small until it reaches $30 million in revenue — or 30 times the exemption level.

EBay declined to say how many of its sellers would have to start paying taxes if the law was passed. It said that its largest customers are usually also selling on other platforms, so they don’t know how many would be above the limit. “We do know that we have a couple hundred thousand folks who are small businesses and entrepreneurs; they are more than casual sellers,” Bieron said.

The whole point of the law is for states to simplify the tax-collection process, but Bieron argues that the the proposal would still be too onerous for a company with limited resources.

“Our view has always been that a small business exemption should protect a small business,” he said.

In a letter sent to the Senate on Thursday, Paul Misener, Amazon’s VP for global public policy, applauded the bill: “I am writing to thank you for your bill, which will allow states with simplified rules to require sales tax collection by out-of-state sellers who choose to make sales to in-state buyers.”

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

“We are building the Uber for delivery people,” Donahoe said this morning at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, following an appearance by Apple’s Tim Cook. “We think we can do it at scale. No one single retailer can do it on their own, so we are building it for the retail industry and using our technology capabilities to build it.”

His opinions differ drastically from Amazon’s last public statements on the topic. In July, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said the company was building more distribution centers to be closer to customers and to speed up delivery times, “but in terms of same-day delivery, we don’t see a way to do same-day on a broad scale at the moment.”

Donahoe said he believes that there is plenty of unused inventory in today’s delivery systems to make it work. The goal is to be able to bid out each order to the nearest driver, similar to the way Uber taps into a network of town cars looking for their next fare.

So far, eBay is experimenting on a small scale with pilot programs in San Francisco and parts of New York City. The eBay Now app allows you to look for local inventory at several stores, including Macy’s and Walgreens. After an order is placed, the products are delivered within two to four hours (right now, Donahoe said, times are averaging one to two hours).

He said the system doesn’t work for any one retailer on their own, but that it could work by providing the service to a network of companies with many locations. Still, that isn’t stopping other mega merchants, like Walmart, from also experimenting with same-day delivery. The benefit to eBay or Walmart, in general, is that they are relying on inventory located in stores near central locations, unlike Amazon, which owns massive distribution centers often based on the outskirts of town.

Is delivery something that could eventually make money? Donahoe thinks so.

“We are trying to build it, and over time, if we are building value, then the retailers will pay for those leads,” he said.

But next month, the Los Angeles-based company plans to relaunch subscriptions, hoping to bring back customers who stopped visiting on a regular basis without the monthly obligation.

The change is one of many taking place at the company since CEO Bill Strauss was replaced by its founder, Brian Lee, three months ago.

Lee calls the new subscription offer “Amazon Prime with a twist.”

The old deal cost $40 a month to receive a new pair of pumps, wedges or heels based on your likes and preferences. The new deal costs only $9.95 a month and can be used like a credit that can be applied toward the purchase of a pair of shoes.

The ShoeDazzle-branded shoes will continue to cost only $40, but the company will also start selling name-brand shoes for up to $80, providing a wide variety of styles to choose from. The credit can accumulate for up to 12 months, allowing women to apply multiple months of credit toward one pair of shoes.

Lee said the program is designed to increase loyalty. If someone already has $10 to spend on the site, they will find more reasons to return on a regular basis. (Its closest competitor, JustFab, is still charging $40 for its shoe subscription.)

Since launching a beta program a couple of weeks ago, Lee said, they already have 12,000 people signed up and thousands more on the wait list. The members already have increased visits to the site by 12 percent and have a 30 percent higher buy rate.

When ShoeDazzle discontinued its subscription service a year ago, Lee said it was successful in opening up the site to more buyers, but more importantly, they lost engagement.

As part of re-engaging its fan base, Lee has also hired designer and stylist Rachel Zoe as chief stylist, the company’s second celebrity spokesperson. ShoeDazzle was founded, in part, by Kim Kardashian.

The celebrity angle is one that Lee has tapped multiple times. He is also the CEO at The Honest Company, a monthly subscription service he co-founded with actress Jessica Alba that delivers eco-friendly diapers, wipes, skin care and cleaning products to your home.

A new subscription offering and a new celebrity aren’t the only changes Lee has made since rejoining ShoeDazzle. In October, he laid off 22 of the company’s 240 employees and cut back on other verticals the company was getting into like swimwear, lingerie and handbags.

He also relaunched the site, adding two new features that are designed to give customers reasons to return on a daily basis. Rachel Zoe’s Edit gives fashion advice to shoppers, and the Daily Fix introduces a new pair of shoes everyday.

Despite all the changes, Lee said the company recorded $100 million in revenue in 2012, an 80 percent increase over the year earlier. He expects the company to be cash-flow positive by the end of the year.

Investors may be feeling justified, as Amazon’s revenue did come in light for the holiday quarter. (In after-hours trading, though, the stock is up nearly nine percent on strong operating income.)

Amazon said its revenue totaled $21.27 billion in the fourth quarter, falling short of analysts expectations, which were projecting revenue of $22.3 billion.

Amazon’s number, however, was in line with its own guidance. The e-commerce giant was forecasting net sales between $20.25 billion and $22.75 billion, representing a jump of 16 percent to 31 percent.

Historically, Amazon has been able to grow at twice the rate of the overall e-commerce market during the fourth quarter, and since eBay filed strong results, it was expected to do the same. But with sales growing only 22 percent year over year, the company missed that typically reliable benchmark.

According to comScore, online spending in the U.S. totaled $42.3 billion, representing a 14 percent increase over 2011. (Excluding unfavorable impact from foreign exchange rates in the quarter, Amazon net sales grew 23 percent compared with fourth quarter 2011.)

For Amazon, the story is all about its revenue, since it often invests all of its profits back into the business.

In terms of the company’s bottom line, results were also in line with Amazon’s guidance, but then again, it left itself a lot of room for error.

It had projected that results could be anywhere from an operating loss of $490 million to an operating profit of $310 million. In the fourth quarter, it reported operating income in the upper end of that range, increasing 56 percent year over year to $405 million.

Investors liked those results, and in after-hours trading, pushed the stock up $22.44, or 8.6 percent, to $282.79. That’s much closer to its recent 52-week high of $284 a share.

Its net income, however, decreased 45 percent to $97 million, or 21 cents a share. That, too, fell short of analyst expectations, which wanted Amazon to generate a profit of 29 cents a share.

Clearly, rather than making money, Amazon has continued its emphasis on investments by continuing to sink money into building more warehouses and developing new technology and services, like streaming video deals, cloud computing and its Kindle hardware division.

Investors want to know if that will continue this quarter.

For the first quarter, the company is projecting net sales to fall between $15 billion and $16.6 billion, representing growth of 14 percent to 26 percent. But again, there’s a wide range of expectations for its operating results, which are being projected to fall between a loss of $285 million and a profit of $65 million.

For the full year, net sales totaled $61.1 billion, up 27 percent year over year. The company also reported a net loss of $39 million, or nine cents a share.

Image copyright mtkang

Annual growth among online retailers continued to outpace the growth seen by brick-and-mortar merchants during the 2012 holiday season. In fact, year-over-year growth in both sales and transaction volume was more than three times higher among e-commerce retailers, according to our Chase Holiday Pulse, which aggregates payment processing data from 50 of the largest U.S. e-commerce merchants. Retailers experienced a continued downward trend in average ticket prices, with season-to-date prices down nearly 8 percent compared to last year. This dichotomy between a rise in sales volume and a decline in ticket prices is a pattern to watch in the year ahead.

Behind all of these numbers are three trends to follow this year.

First, the 2012 holiday shopping season was the initial year e-commerce retailers witnessed the “Online Shopping Continuum,” where typical peak shopping days — such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and even Christmas Eve, which continue to be significant moments for brick-and-mortar merchants — morphed into a week-long phenomenon. During the week following Black Friday, for instance, retailers saw strong online sales volume growth, powered by additional incentives on the days following Cyber Monday, such as time-sensitive, around-the-clock coupons and special offers. This is a continuation of the urgency mechanism that many retailers implement during key shopping days.

What had traditionally been secluded to a 24-hour period became week-long shopping, dubbed “Cyber Week.” For the seven-day period after Black Friday, the Chase Holiday Pulse revealed that year-over-year sales increased by nearly 23 percent. This could be a contributing factor to the continued decline in average ticket prices as consumers are shopping more frequently, purchasing in increments rather than in bulk, purchasing fewer or less expensive items or taking advantage of extended promotions. Interestingly, consumer spending tapered down the weekend following Cyber Week, with year-over-year sales growth rates declining by nearly 18 percent.

The Chase Holiday Pulse also reported 38 percent sales growth between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, potentially fueled by extended retailer price reductions and the rise of mobile commerce that provided more flexible real-time shopping over the weekend.

Second, we saw a rise in online sales during what the analysts called “Green Week” (Dec. 10-17), which was the busiest seven-day period of the holiday shopping season in terms of transaction volume this year. Online merchants saw high shopping volume — year-over-year sales and transaction for the same period were up nearly 11 percent and 17 percent respectively — throughout the week as responsible consumers acted to utilize free delivery offers before the holidays.

Finally, the powerful comparison shopping behavior known as “showrooming” played an outsized role thanks to the growth of the mobile smartphone. Showrooming, which is when consumers use brick-and-mortar stores to survey and compare products and then ultimately buy those products online through a phone, tablet or computer, potentially from a competitor, has pushed retailers to match online prices and enhance their in-store customer service. But there’s no reason to believe this phenomenon is a passing fad. Forty-three percent of U.S. adults admitted to participating in showrooming, according to a November 2012 poll from Harris Interactive.

The conclusion of the 2012 holiday shopping season suggests continued demand for e-commerce shopping in 2013. Continued growth in both sales and transaction volume, driven by extended periods of strong sales, the increased use of mobile technology and the emergence of showrooming, made for a record season for online retailers across the country. The aggregated power of these trends helped drive the 2012 holiday shopping season. As the online retail industry continues to grow — adapting to new technology trends and consumer behaviors — there is reason to be optimistic for a healthy economy in 2013.

Chase Paymentech, a subsidiary of J.P. Morgan Chase (JPMC), is a leading provider of payment processing and merchant acquiring. The company’s proprietary platforms enable integrated solutions for all payment types, including credit, debit, prepaid stored value and electronic check processing, as well as digital, alternative and mobile payment options. In 2011, Chase Paymentech processed 24.4 billion transactions with a value of $553.7 billion, including an estimated half of all global Internet transactions.

But Flurry, a mobile analytics company, is introducing the term “app & mortar” in a new report published today that explores the rise in smartphone shopping.

Clearly, the term is a play on the term “bricks and clicks,” which emerged in the late ’90s and became popular as e-commerce started to challenge physical retailers.

In some respects, this report confirms what we already knew about mobile commerce, but takes it a step further by figuring out who is benefiting the most right now from the trend. Surprisingly, it’s physical retailers.

In the report, Flurry analyzed the amount of time spent by consumers across more than 1,800 iOS and Android shopping apps in December 2012, compared to the same month a year earlier.

The biggest growth category by far was apps developed by retailers, such as Walmart, Macy’s and Gap.

Flurry said time spent in retail apps skyrocketed by 525 percent year over year. In contrast, online marketplaces, such as eBay and Amazon, increased by only 178 percent.

In terms of the share of shoppers’ time being spent inside the different apps, retailers also saw the biggest gains. In December 2012, shoppers spent 27 percent of their time inside of retail apps, up by 12 percentage points over the same month a year earlier.

The gain in share by retail apps came at the expense of online marketplace and daily deal apps, which declined year over year. The share of time being spent with online marketplaces decreased from 25 percent in December 2011 to 20 percent in December 2012. Daily deal providers, like Groupon and LivingSocial, fell to 13 percent from 20 percent.

Flurry did not offer a lot of analysis as to why this was occurring, but suggested that retailers were beginning to better respond to the move toward “online meeting offline shopping through mobile apps.” In general, 2012 was the first year that many online or physical retailers took mobile shopping seriously, so it was likely that the distribution of time spent would change with a huge surge in consumer interest and better options.

Interestingly, even though Flurry noted a decrease in time spent in online marketplace apps, eBay still easily beat its mobile revenue forecast (so it’s not clear if there’s a direct correlation between time spent and dollars spent). Last week, eBay said it recorded $13 billion in mobile revenue in 2012, exceeding its forecast of $10 billion. This year, the online retailer expects mobile revenue to hit $20 billion.

EBay is the most transparent of the larger e-commerce players when it comes to mobile’s contribution.

In contrast, an analyst’s best guess for Amazon is that about $3 billion to $5 billion of its annual sales are coming from mobile devices.

Goldberger will become senior vice president of Target.com and Mobile, and will run all aspects of the retailer’s e-commerce business, including user experience, merchandising and analytics. He starts Feb. 11.

Last week, TechCrunch reported that Andy Page, Gilt’s president, was leaving Gilt. A spokeswoman confirmed that Page was ending his cross-country commute from San Francisco, which he’d been making weekly for the past three years.

The two departures cap a tumultuous year for Gilt, which has restructured its business several times in preparation for an initial public offering. Late last year, Gilt’s co-founder, Kevin Ryan, was replaced by Michelle Peluso, a Citigroup executive and member of Gilt’s board.

Gilt is dealing with the repercussions of its quick expansion into multiple verticals, and has not found a path to profitability in some of the niches. Some of the recent product cutbacks have included groceries and full-priced men’s clothing. It is also currently trying to sell Jetsetter, its travel division.

Gilt does not plan to fill the two new vacancies immediately. Peluso starts as CEO at the end of February, so she’ll be figuring out the right direction for the company, the spokeswoman added.

Goldberger was most recently executive vice president at Gilt, in charge of Home, Taste, Baby & Kids, and Business Development. And while Target will represent a much more corporate environment than Gilt’s startup culture, Goldberger will still face a number of challenges.

In 2011, Target’s online president left the company after the retailer’s website crashed from overwhelming demand for new designer apparel. The management change occurred soon after Target took control of its e-commerce site from Amazon.com. Since then, it has been competing fiercely with the e-commerce giant.

Earlier this month, Target announced plans to match prices from the top online retailers year-round, including Amazon.com, Walmart.com, BestBuy.com and Toysrus.com. It also said that its Target stores will match prices found at Target.com.

On Wednesday, the San Jose-based company will report fourth-quarter and year-end earnings, and eBay is expecting the holidays to have treated it well.

For the fourth quarter, it is projecting earnings per share of up to 58 cents on revenue of up to $4 billion. For the full year, profits are expected to be as high as $1.99 a share on up to $14.1 billion in revenue.

Analysts are a little more cautious.

The consensus is calling for eBay to earn a profit of 61 cents in the fourth quarter and $2.05 a share for the full year. Those numbers are best compared to eBay’s non-GAAP projections, which exclude some items. On a non-GAAP basis, eBay is projecting to earn up to 69 cents a share for the quarter, and up to $2.35 a share for the year.

One analyst, however, recently revised his target, saying he expects eBay to now hit the projected 69 cents a share.

The rise in the stock price over the past year stems from the work eBay has done to overhaul its marketplace business.

The turnaround has included fixing back-end technology, like search algorithms, and revamping the design, including a new logo and homepage. Innovation is also occurring in delivery with programs testing same-day delivery and pickup services. As the transformation has started to take hold, eBay has started to attract new users to the site via TV commercials.

Operating alongside eBay is its buddy, PayPal, which also had a strong year. In the third quarter, the payment division saw revenue jump 23 percent compared to the year earlier.

One particular subject the company will be eager to talk about this quarter is how much growth it is seeing from consumers shopping on their phones and tablet computers. In the third quarter, it forecasted that eBay and PayPal would each transact $10 billion in volume this year over mobile, or more than twice what they recorded in 2011.

It will not be a surprise if eBay blows past these numbers, given the number of times it has revised its figures upward. Other third-party reports confirm what eBay is already witnessing.

For instance, last week, eMarketer reported that U.S. sales over mobile devices increased 81 percent, to nearly $25 billion, in 2012. At that level, it said, mobile devices accounted for 11 percent of total U.S. e-commerce sales. In comparison, I’ve been reporting for the past few months that eBay’s mobile revenue is closer to 16 percent of its total sales (but those figures have been based only on estimates).

Amazon is reportedly generating half as much, or around 8 percent to 10 percent of its revenue from mobile.

Finally, analysts won’t just be looking for a recap of the company’s 2012 accomplishments on Wednesday, but will also be looking for hints about the future.

The big question on everyone’s mind is whether eBay can maintain its growth for another year.

On the marketplace side of the business, eBay anticipates growing revenue by helping brick-and-mortar stores like Toys “R” Us and Macy’s compete online. Meanwhile, PayPal has been slowly expanding into in-store payments, with the hope that 2013 will be the first year it brings in revenue from the business (or at least that’s what eBay hopes).

On Friday, eBay’s shares traded 1.3 percent higher to close at $53.70, which is just shy of its 52-week high of $54.20 a share.

That seems to be ShoeDazzle’s plan.

Three months after ShoeDazzle replaced its CEO Bill Strauss with founder Brian Lee and laid off a small number of employees, the company has named celebrity designer and stylist Rachel Zoe as chief stylist.

To be sure, Lee is no stranger to celebrity endorsements.

Not only did he start ShoeDazzle four years ago with Kim Kardashian, who still remains involved in the company, he is also currently CEO at the Honest Company, which he co-founded with actress Jessica Alba.

Lee told Women’s Wear Daily that Zoe will be critical in getting the word out to ShoeDazzle’s core demographic. He said among women 18 to 32, ShoeDazzle already has a 45 percent awareness level, but Zoe should help in increasing that.

Zoe is also the star of “The Rachel Zoe Project,” a reality television series on Bravo.

When ShoeDazzle first launched, it charged women $40 to receive a pair of shoes every month. The catch, however, was that if you failed to log in and tell ShoeDazzle you weren’t interested in any of the options, they would charge you anyway.

In March, Strauss did away with that model, so that members would be charged only if they made a purchase — no matter if it was once a month or once every six months.

The idea was to enable the site to appeal to a wider audience. ShoeDazzle had 10 million members, which led Strauss to say at the time, “That isn’t enough. We want tens of millions.” ShoeDazzle also started selling apparel, lingerie and handbags.

The unintended consequence of the changes was that the site became much like any other e-commerce destination, where people visited when they wanted to buy something. But with Lee’s return to the business — and Zoe all signed up — subscriptions will also make a comeback, just like a pair of black pumps.

“Do I think a subscription business can’t get to $1 billion? Absolutely not. It can,” he told Women’s Wear Daily. “It depends on the product. Subscriptions only work in two areas: Where there is an absolute need for it or an absolute desire for it.”

Longtime digital exec Jeff Berman is joining Hollywood production company BermanBraun as its first president.

Berman — who is no relation to BermanBraun co-founder Gail Berman — comes to the firm from the National Football League where he has been in charge of its Web, mobile, social and non-console gaming efforts. While there, he worked on several new initiatives, such as its multi-party video chat for Fantasy Football.

Several years before that, he was a top exec at social networking site Myspace, finally ending up as president of sales and marketing, where he was in charge of branded advertising, sales operations, entertainment, content and marketing. Efforts there by Berman included the now defunct Web-only series “Quarterlife,” which also had a very short life on a major network.

The Yale Law School grad was also on the board of Buddy Media, which was sold to Salesforce.com last year.

He’s an interesting person, then, for BermanBraun, which focuses on content across multiple screens, including big branded Web sites such as Wonderwall for Microsoft’s MSN and also more traditional entertainment shows. Its juicy-looking television series “Deception,” for example, is set to appear on NBC this week. It now has about 130 employees, mostly working at its Santa Monica, Calif., HQ.

“We needed an exceptional leader to manage the company,” said BermanBraun co-founder Lloyd Braun, who was once a top media exec at Yahoo. “And Jeff is someone who has skillsets in a whole bunch of areas and an emotional intelligence that is as important to what we do.”

Braun said Berman would initially focus on his area of expertise — digital — but that he would become more involved in the television and movie arenas over time.

BermanBraun — which considered raising funding last year — is at an interesting juncture in its development, trying to form a new kind of independent Hollywood media company that straddles analog and digital.

Berman said he was attracted to the opportunity there.

“I had a great job, since there is nothing bigger than the NFL,” he said in an interview yesterday. “But Lloyd and Gail have an incredible vision across platforms for entertainment.”

He added that content was just at the beginning of development online, but was finally poised to explode with the popularity of tablets, smartphones, interactive TV and other such devices, as well as social and e-commerce tools.

“The mind reels, there is so much that has happened and can happen,” said Berman. “I don’t know if there is a better time to be at such a place to create these new franchises — [BermanBraun] is a laboratory, where stuff is actually working.”

Nicolas Raymond / Freestock

According to comScore’s final tally for the November-December shopping season, spending for the two-month period totaled $42.3 billion, a 14 percent increase over 2011.

“This year’s growth rate is essentially on a par with last year’s,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “But despite many positives for the online sector, this year’s season did not quite perform up to our initial expectation for growth rates in excess of 16 percent as we fell a billion dollars short of our expected total of $43.4 billion.”

The research firm, which tracks online shopping habits over broadband connections in the U.S., said a slowdown occurred after Thanksgiving due to low consumer confidence.

“As it turns out, this December swoon coincided closely with a significant decline in the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index that was attributed in large part to consumers’ fiscal cliff concerns. You might say that had it not been for Congress, every other indicator suggested it would have been an even merrier Christmas for online retailers,” Fulgoni said.

This season’s high points included some particularly outstanding days for online retailers, including Cyber Monday, Nov. 26 ($1.5 billion); Monday, Dec. 17 (up 76 percent to $1.013 billion); and Christmas Day (up 36 percent to $288 million). But those good days could not make up for three solid weeks in which the growth rates failed to surpass 12 percent.

Here’s a week-by-week breakdown of spending this season. A noticeable lull is present during the middle weeks:

This softness may have been expected based on preliminary results that some retailers released this morning. The figures indicate that sales may have been soft for many in December, not just online retailers.

For instance, Target said sales in December were flat; and Wet Seal, Macy’s and Kohl’s either cut their fourth-quarter outlooks or said quarterly results will be at or near the low end of their previous guidance range, according to MarketWatch.

Online sales are still growing at a much faster clip than retail as a whole. For instance, overall, December same-store sales, excluding drug stores, rose 4.8 percent, according to data from Retail Metrics.

While comScore’s report may be disappointing to some, it won’t affect all online retailers evenly.

For one thing, comScore’s results don’t include purchases made over mobile phones. Mobile commerce, which includes orders placed on tablets and phones through mobile browsers or applications, were a highlight for many retailers this holiday season. Second, there will be some retailers that overperformed and others that lost share.

As an example, Baird Equity Research’s Colin Sebastian raised eBay’s price target earlier today to $60, up by $2, based on evidence that eBay and PayPal excelled during the holiday season. The company’s full results will be out on Jan. 16.

And the one to watch closely will be Amazon.

Many brick-and-mortar companies resolved to fight the giant e-tailer by guaranteeing to match online prices. Whether that had any impact is still not known. Additionally, there was some question earlier this holiday season if Amazon was performing as well as expected.

Wells Fargo Analyst Matt Nemer said that for the first time in years, Amazon was giving some customers coupons for 10 percent off their orders. But it was unclear whether Amazon was only trying to reactivate old customers or if it was doing it because sales were short. Another plausible reason was that customers were procrastinating. Amazon allowed some customers to order as late as Dec. 21 with the promise of delivery by Dec. 24, which may have delayed some purchases.