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Technology Stocks : Egghead Computer (EGGS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: purecntry5 who wrote (650)	5/9/1998 11:52:00 PM
From: esterina	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8307

Online retail fact: customers want low price People looking to make a purchase online are not much interested in browsing; they want to buy. That's the conclusion of a Jupiter Communications research study released in New York Friday at the company's Reinventing Retail conference in New York. According to a Jupiter/NFO Interactive survey of online consumers, 77 percent of buyers are going online with a specific purchase in mind, and 79 percent of those shoppers visit several sites before making a purchase. As a result, Jupiter believes that shopping bots, automated shoppers, will be an effective tool for retailers to attract today's online shoppers. Shopping bots search the Web for specific products and generate a list of merchants with the best prices. Nicole Vanderbilt, group director, Digital Commerce at Jupiter conceded to CBS MarketWatch some merchants will be reluctant to open their product data to bots. However, she said online competition has some elements of traditional retailing in that "Online merchants must create unique shopping experiences and implement loyalty programs to differentiate themselves, in an effort to convert a portion of these one-time bot-driven shoppers into a loyal customer base." The most prominent bots already operating on the Net are Jango on Excite Inc. and Junglee on Yahoo! Inc. Vanderbilt said these portal sites generate a lot of traffic which is what merchants want. "At the end of the day, online merchants know the game is to acquire customers and build volume. Bots are the tool," she said.