To: esecurities(tm) who wrote (2933 ) 12/29/1998 9:13:00 PM From: esecurities(tm) Respond to
Will e-tailing explosion tap Online Merchant*?E-Tailing No Holiday Trinket The impact of e-tailers this holiday is only a preview of what's to come. As a new e-commerce analysis Tuesday estimated the value of the season's online sales at $5 billion, retail industry observers said consumers are likely to continue to buy online in heavier numbers in the months ahead. "Last year's Christmas shopping online was basically a consumer experiment," said David Pecaut, a senior vice president of the Boston Consulting Group, who oversaw a survey of online retailing in cooperation with Shop.org, a trade group. "This year marks the establishment of online retailing as a decided alternative to traditional shopping," he told CBS.MarketWatch.com. Pecaut's survey included 17 major retailers in gift-giving categories, including electronics, books, music and apparel. Pecaut said he's confident electronic retailing will show continued strength into next year. "Probably a million or more people shopped online for the first time this season," he said. "Having tried it, they are going to be back. Retailers are reporting higher levels of customer satisfaction, due to offering better and faster responses to customer e-mails and phone calls." Agreeing there were some hitches in e-tailing operations this year, Pecaut said, "These pockets of problems were mostly related to exceeding even the highest expectations of usage." A more comprehensive analysis of the impact of e-shopping was offered by industry newsletter publisher Kurt Barnard. He told CNBC, "We are now finding that e-commerce is likely to be the next revolution in retail, and we will see it happening in two or three years." The publisher of Barnard's Retail Trend Report also said, "It is likely to upset and unsettle the entire complex of all the channels of retail distribution, primarily in terms of competition." He said the day isn't far off when a store in New York, for instance, will find itself fighting for business against retailers in Iowa and Italy, thanks to the universal access on the Internet. Barnard was, however, reserved about the level of e-tail business that may have already shifted online. "Last year it was minuscule," he said. "This year is perhaps half a percent above minuscule." Web Commerce, Personalization to Grow Expect to see more e-tailing on the Internet next year, as well as increased efforts by sites to personalize information for visitors, according to forecasters at Ziff-Davis' (ZD) PC Magazine. In 1998, it seemed as if almost every business sported a Web presence or was preparing to go there, said editor Michael J. Miller. Growth will be fueled by more and more people using the Web, new tools that make the online experience easier and more useful and more companies entering the e-commerce space, he said..." pcworld.com . The Internet Daily (TM) is originally published and edited by CBS MarketWatch.
