Holidays Kick Off Online Retailer
'Portal Combat'
zdnet.com
By Connie Guglielmo
November 25, 1998 12:57 PM ET
Santa Claus isn't the only one coming to town this
holiday season.
In what's shaping up to be what one analyst describes
as "portal combat," new and established online
retailers -- including Amazon.com Inc. and Yahoo
Inc.! -- spent the past week opening new stores and
launching shopping programs. Their goal: to establish
themselves as electronic-commerce hubs, or portals,
designed to capture the hearts, minds and credit-
card numbers of as many online consumers as
possible during the all-important holiday shopping
season.
"The big a-ha for '98 was, 'Boy, there are a lot of
people out there who are ready to buy products. What
can we do to sell to them?' " said Kate Delhagen, a
digital commerce analyst at Forrester Research Inc
(www.forrester.com). "Among consumers, the Internet
has arrived and has started to matter as a viable
e-commerce channel."
How big a deal will online sales be this holiday
season, which retailers say should account for
one-fourth to one-half of their annual sales? Anywhere
from a record-breaking $2.3 billion at the low end,
according to Jupiter Communications LLC, to a high
of $3.5 billion, according to Forrester. Overall,
consumers are expected to spend $13 billion online in
1998, according to estimates by 127 top online
retailers in a study released last week by shop.org
and The Boston Consulting Group.
Online retailers are doing all they can to push those
numbers even higher, with Amazon.com, Buy.com
Inc. and newcomer National Media Corp. taking the
"superstore" approach to online shopping.
Making good on its promise to branch out beyond
books, Amazon.com (www.amazon.com) opened an
online video store with 60,000 video and 2,000 digital
videodisc titles and a holiday gift store featuring
consumer electronics, toys and games.
National Media goes live this week with a new,
for-members-only superstore it claims will offer the
lowest prices on 800,000 brand-name products.
Consumers who pay the $72 annual fee to join the
service, called Everything4Less
(www.everything4less.com), will get a refund of 135
percent of the difference if they find a lower-priced
product. The stores also enjoy free two-year extended
warranties on a variety of goods, and online
customers will receive up to 5 percent rebates on their
purchases.
The week also saw the relaunch of BuyComp.com, a
year-old computer reseller, into Buy.com
(www.buy.com), a new superstore offering computer
products, videos and soon books.
Taking an aggregation vs. superstore approach to
e-commerce, Yahoo! put a new front end on the
build-your-own-store and hosting service it set up
midyear after acquiring online store creator Viaweb
Inc. Its new Yahoo! Shopping service
(shopping.yahoo.com) lets users search for, compare
and buy more than 2 million products from the more
than 2,700 online stores it hosts.
Redefining One-Stop Shopping
Some e-commerce portals that have come online
recently:
Amazon.com Inc. (www.amazon.com): Adds
60,000 consumer electronics products, digital
videodiscs, holiday gifts and videos to its
already robust collection of books and music.
National Media Corp.
(www.everything4less.com): Kicks off a
multimillion-dollar TV campaign to promote a
new, for-members superstore with 800,000
brand-name products and a low-price
guarantee.
Buy.com Inc. (www.buy.com): Formerly
BuyComp.com Inc., Buy.com relaunches as
an Amazon.com competitor with books,
computer products, games and videos, with
plans soon to add music.
Yahoo! Inc. (store.yahoo.com): Puts a new
front on the 2,700 stores it already hosts that
lets users search and comparison shop for
products, then place their multistore order
using a single shopping cart. |
