Web retailers stocks fall, visitors complain
NEW YORK, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Holiday cheer for online retailers evaporated Monday as share prices of some of the leading electronic shops tumbled on concerns that their performance may not meet investors' expectations and amid reports of rising customer dissatisfaction.
Shares of Amazon.com Inc. (NasdaqNM:AMZN - news) fell 8-7/8, nearly 10 percent, to close at 81-1/8. Shares of eToys Inc. (NasdaqNM:ETYS - news) were off 5 to 25-15/16, a near 17-percent drop. The stock also hit a 52-week intraday low of 25-5/8. Its 52-week high was 86.
EBay Inc. (NasdaqNM:EBAY - news) saw its share price skid about 6 percent, off 8-5/16 to 134, its lowest level since Nov. 12.
''Expectations were pretty high,'' said Michelle Clayman at New Amsterdam Partners, referring to the online retailers. ''Some of the valuations are pretty stratospheric,'' she said. ''They have got to start showing profits, and healthy profits.''
Meanwhile, the number of gripes from online shoppers who participated in Robertson Stephens Online Shopping Challenge -- a type of Web opinion box -- grew as Christmas week approached, the investment bank said.
''Overall satisfaction with shopping experiences declined this week to 8.17 (on a scale of 1-10 ) from 8.40 last week, driven by consumer frustration with ease of ordering, on-time delivery, and customer support,'' Robertson Stephens analyst Lauren Cooks Levitan wrote in a statement.
Some 10.9 percent of the 500 who responded in the ninth week of the opinion collection ending Dec. 19 said they would be unlikely to shop at the particular site again, up from 8.8 percent from the previous year.
To participate in the survey an Internet shopper had to actively seek out the Online Challenge Web site to fill out a questionnaire, whcih made them eligible to win a $10,000 online shopping prize. Robertson Stephens acknowledges the possibility that a person could have filled out more than one form.
Although complaints may have risen, so did the number of shoppers and their spending, according to early estimates.
Market research firm Forrester Research Inc. estimated before the season started that revenue from Internet retailers between Thanksgiving and Christmas would total $4 billion.
''It now looks like the season will exceed our expectations,'' analyst Evie Dykema said.
The company has no figures for last year's holiday season, but she noted that e-retailer revenues in the fourth quarter would total in excess of $8 billion, more than revenues for all of 1998.
In the week ending Dec. 19, the number of visitors to electronic commerce sites jumped 37 percent from the same week a year ago, according to research firm Media Metrix.
Traffic to Amazon in the week ending Dec. 19 totaled an average of nearly 7 million daily visitors, double the amount of last year, Media Metrix said.
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