Hitwise Intelligence - North America

December 16, 2009

Searches aid offline purchases

Shoppers have plenty of gift buying left to do this season according to a survey released by the NRF which found that the average shopper had completed 46.7 percent of their holiday shopping by the second week of December, down...
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December 10, 2009

Hot Products for 2009

Everyone is aware by now about the season’s hottest toy, Zhu Zhu Pets, especially after the brief scare regarding Mr. Squiggles toxicity (he has been fully exonerated). This year's other runaway hit and hard to find item is the Mindflex...
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November 24, 2009

Thanksgiving and Black Friday Seasonal Traffic Patterns

When you start hearing about doorbuster sales and stores opening at 5 am, it can mean only one thing – Thanksgiving and Black Friday are almost upon us again! Retailers started to promote pre-Black Friday sales as early as late...
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November 02, 2009

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Predictions

Holiday projections are out and many are predicting a gloomy holiday season for retailers. The NRF forecasts a 1% decline growth in total retail sales for the 2009 holiday season, totaling $437.6 billion. The online channel is poised to fare...
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September 15, 2009

Free Shipping - Vendor and Consumer Perspectives

Our sister company Experian CheetahMail released an insightful white paper on the topic of free shipping email offers (download the paper here). Among several interesting findings, the paper provides some seasonality data on the percentage of clients that sent free...
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Posted by Bill Tancer at 05:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Shopping and Classifieds

August 20, 2009

Resurgence of layaway programs continues

With many consumers remaining cautious with spending, retailers are turning to layaway programs again this holiday season to offer shoppers a payment plan to buy gifts. In 2008, layaway programs made a comeback as retailers hoped to encourage shoppers to...
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Posted by Heather Dougherty at 03:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Holiday | Retail | Shopping and Classifieds

Bing Shopping takes off

Microsoft recently announced a promotion to receive Double Cashback when consumers use Bing Shopping for searches and online purchases. Back in October of last year, I wrote about the initial success of the Cashback program to capture visits, so this...
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Posted by Heather Dougherty at 11:37 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (2)
Posted to Bing | Retail | Shopping and Classifieds

July 22, 2009

Amazon acquires Zappos.com

Amazon announced a deal today to acquire apparel and footwear retailer Zappos.com. The popular online retailer ranked 3rd last week among online retailers within the Apparel and Accessories category behind Victoria’s Secret and Old Navy. Both Amazon and Zappos.com are...
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Posted by Heather Dougherty at 06:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Retail | Shopping and Classifieds