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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DellFan who wrote (137060)	7/19/1999 5:22:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 176387

Online sales seen near $37 billion in 1999 - study DF:check this out,somebody is going to rake it in,hope Dell gets a few bucks out of it. ================ NEW YORK, July 19 (Reuters) - Despite concern over privacy and security, consumers in North America are expected to spend nearly $37 billion shopping online this year, more than double the $14.9 billion they spent in 1998, a study said Monday. Despite the huge growth rate, the 1999 forecast, if met, would represent just 1.2 percent of total retailer revenue, according to the Shop.org study conducted by management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group. Shop.org is a trade group for online retailers. The 1998 online revenue total represented only 0.5 percent of all retail sales last year. The study, based on first quarter 1999 results from more than 300 online retailers, also found that in 1998, multichannel retailers -- or merchants that have brick-and-mortar stores, catalogs or call centers in addition to Web sites -- generated 62 percent of online revenues, compared with 38 percent for pure online retailers. In a conference call with reporters, David Pecaut, who heads Boston Consulting's E-Commerce Practice, said he expected multichannel retailers to widen their lead over pure play online retailers in attracting customers. ''My own perception is that the multichannel retailers, in areas where they're already stronger, are picking up steam,'' he said. ''If anything, it's likely the multichannel number will probably go up'' this year. And the pure play retailers spent more to get those sales -- $42 per customer, compared with $22 per customer for multichannel retailers. Pecaut said that in addition, pure play online merchants spend about 76 percent of revenues, or 76 cents for every $1 in sales, on sales and marketing, compared with about 15 percent for multichannel retailers. ''It's still very much a case of building a business and hoping they'll be able to reach customers,'' he said. But he added that multichannel merchants may not be spending enough on marketing and sales to make their online sites successful. Despite all the spending to get and keep online shoppers, Web retailers still have difficulty converting browsers into buyers, Pecaut said. ''Trust and security continues to be a major issue out there for first-time buyers and even people who have already purchased continue to be concerned about that,'' he said, citing concern about credit card fraud and about misuse of personal information. ''Secondly there's a lot of sticker shock out around transportation and delivery costs,'' he added. ''Many (online retailers) have not had enough transparency about that, so the retail process breaks down.'' But these problems are not keeping would-be online merchants from joining the fray. Pecaut said the number of new online retailers every month is in the hundreds, although many are very small and cater to niche areas of retail. biz.yahoo.com