AllThingsD » online retailers

Amazon Tells Lawmakers It Supports Sales Tax

Kristina Peterson — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:40:24 +0000

Amazon.com Inc. “strongly supports” federal legislation permitting states to collect state sales tax from Internet retailers, so long as few companies are permitted to duck the requirements, an Amazon executive said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

Though the Seattle-based online retailing giant has clashed with several individual states this year over efforts to gather sales tax, Amazon supports “an even-handed federal framework for state sales tax collection,” Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy, said at Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing.

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Study: Shopping on the Tablet Proves Popular

Tom Loftus — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:00:11 +0000

The tablet is gaining in popularity as the platform of choice according to a recent survey of online shoppers. Online retailers, meanwhile, are still in the early stages of deciding how best to customize the tablet shopping experience.

Over half of tablet owners say that they use it for shopping. And among those who owned multiple devices, the tablet trumps both the smartphone and the PC as the preferred shopping device.

The Forrester study, which based its findings on a survey of more than 20,000 online buyers by Bizrate Insights, also found that tablet users spend more time on the Web with their tablets than their PCs.

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Luxe Lowdown: Tony Sites Begin to Invite Buyer Reviews

Rachel Dodes — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:00:31 +0000

More than a decade after book and electronics retailers embraced online customer reviews, the most elite stores in the U.S. are opening their websites—and the brands they sell—to the slings and arrows of public opinion.
At the end of the month, Saks.com, the online arm of Saks Fifth Avenue, will unveil a five-star review system where customers can express their opinions on products ranging from $1,700 Jimmy Choo bags to $7 Kiehl’s lip balm. Macy’s Inc.’s Bloomingdale’s division and Neiman Marcus added their own versions of reviews recently, following the lead of Nordstrom, which began offering them last fall.
The changes are being driven by the need to beef up online sales, and a realization among luxury retailers that customers want the ability to take shopping advice from their peers.

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Blame the Rich for Poor Online Sales

Ben Worthen — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:17:44 +0000

Sales for online retailers during the holiday season appear to have declined slightly from 2007, a calamity in an industry accustomed to growth of 20 percent or more. And it looks as though one group was keeping a tighter grip on its wallets than others: the wealthy.

Most retailers won’t disclose holiday sales figures until January. In the meantime, we’re left to piece together clues from third parties that track sales and Web traffic. MasterCard’s SpendingPulse unit reported last week that e-commerce sales were down two percent compared with last year, a figure that is in line with the one percent drop Internet-monitoring company comScore detected.

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Blue Nile: Will They Miss Q4?

Eric Savitz — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:24:56 +0000

On the list of things you might want to cut back on in a recession, you might start with diamonds.

Ergo, you can see why American Technology Research analyst Tim Boyd this morning warned that Blue Nile (NILE)–an online diamond retailer–could suffer a big miss in the fourth quarter. He writes that checks find jewelery retailers had a “horrid” October and November. He says his checks confirm the obvious: “folks aren’t buying a whole lot of jewelery these days.” He says retails stores have seen a huge drop in traffic, with “virtually zero interest at higher price points.” He says some couples may even be postponing engagement plans due to job insecurity and general economic uncertainty.

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Online Spending Two Sizes Too Small?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:19:35 +0000

With the econalypse still playing havoc with global finances, holiday shoppers are behaving pretty much as you’d imagine. They’re spending less–presumably saving up for that awful rainy day when discretionary income is better spent holding onto their homes than on another Wii game under the Christmas tree. According to the latest metrics from comScore (SCOR), online retail sales slowed the second week of December. They slipped one percent, though spending was up three percent from 2007 the week prior. “After a very strong first week of December, e-commerce sales growth slowed somewhat during the most recent week,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “However, the week still managed to see a few particularly strong spending days, with sales of $887 million on Tuesday, Dec. 9 surpassing Green Monday last year (Dec. 10, 2007) as the heaviest online spending day on record. With Christmas now fast approaching, look for online retailers to continue to offer enticing last-minute deals, including discounts on expedited shipping, to spur a final wave of spending.”

And that’s exactly what consumers are looking for, according to Google (GOOG).

“We’ve seen quite an increase in queries for things like discounts and bargains and things like that,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt told “Meet The Press” this past weekend. “And we know that shoppers are using the Internet to get better pricing.”