But does anyone care? Bob Tedeschi in the NY Times writes about Cyber Monday and a bit of its history. Reportedly hundreds of online retailers will offer discounts to get consumers to spend online today. It follows last week’s apparently successful Black Friday, powered by very early store hours and heavy discounting.
Eventually online and traditional shopping come together with local inventory information (and e-commerce runs for its life), as I’ve argued before.
In other online shopping-related news:
Google is offering promotions (including airline miles) via Checkout to lure shoppers to use the system:
This holiday season Google Checkout users will also be able to get a little something extra for themselves when they shop: frequent flyer miles. From now until December 31, users who register to participate will be able to earn two frequent flyer miles for every dollar spent through Google Checkout. Participating airline reward programs include Alaska Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Airlines, Midwest Airlines, Northwest Airlines, US Airways, and United Airlines. These miles are available for US residents only.
What’s more, Google Checkout users will also be able to take advantage of a wide variety of holiday promotions from more than 100 different Google Checkout retailers. These offers range from free shipping to discounts of $10, $20, or even $50 off select purchases.
And, quietly, Google has put “products” back on the home page, in time for the holidays:
If you do a search for “Stoves, 94118” in Google Product Search you get Krillion results. But where’s Intuit’s StepUp, which used to show up in these types of searches? Also, Google has been very quiet about its local shopping program for a long time after initial fanfare. Is the company losing interest? It certainly isn’t doing anything to promote the program it would appear. If not, it’s a missed opportunity.
Indeed, Google’s general lack of attention to Product Search/comparison shopping is a missed opportunity.
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The NY Times’ Brad Stone blogs about the “Web2Store” phenomenon related to the ShopLocal index. And comScore says that $531 million was spent online on Black Friday with bullish predictions for online for today ($700 million) and the rest of this holiday season. Shop.org says that 72 million Americans will shop online today.
Screenwerk 