What Consumers Love Most about Online Retail
There’re a lot of reasons to love shopping online–the convenience, the variety, the prices. Covering an experts seminar hosted by the Australian Retailers Association (ARA), Tony Ibrahim encountered a common theme from the various speakers: The number-one reason consumers turn to online retail is for the service and convenience, with discounts being secondary. Among other important notions reinforced at the seminar were that shoppers often do online research on their smartphones before buying offline (ROPO effect), and that all businesses should make an effort to complement their brick-and-mortar stores with an online presence.
Read the full story at smarthouse.com.au.
Art Industry among Most Active in E-Commerce
Perhaps no industry has taken to online retailing quite like art. A new report from the non-profit art dealer association CINOA explored a variety of topics in the industry. The report’s most amazing finding is that online art sales are expected to grow five times faster than traditional offline sales–putting it at a pace to surpass offline sales by 2020. Art could be exceptionally conducive to online sales because of the auction format in which people like to buy.
Read a full summary of the report at artfixdaily.com.
Amazon Continues to Innovate, This Time with M-Commerce
Bill Siwicki of Internet Retailer is reporting on more savvy goings-on at retail emperor Amazon. Earlier in 2011, Amazon launched a new members-only designer-fashion site called MYHABIT for the growing ranks of fashion lovers out there. Yesterday, they added a corresponding iPhone app for MYHABIT in order to accommodate their loyal followers. This ordinary-sounding development is, in fact, very shrewd. The fashion site offers daily deals–one of today’s sexiest shopping trends. Providing a mobile connection to the deals is quite ingenious, in that followers (customers) are not always in front of their computers exactly when a desired deal crops up, but they almost certainly have with them their beloved smartphones.
Read the full story at internetretailer.com.
