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To: kaydee who wrote (490)	11/28/1998 5:02:00 PM
From: ilh1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1080

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.