Major retailers ditch the Amazon Marketplace
Amazon is online retail's 800 pound gorilla, but even so, it has tried to play nicely with others. One of the ways it has done that is with the Amazon Marketplace, which allows third parties to sell through its site.
The Marketplace accounted for over 30% of Amazon.com's unit sales in Q4 2010, and has helped fuel at least some of Amazon.com's continued impressive growth.
Why people are friending your brand on Facebook
Startups like Klout may have a hard time convincing brands they can prove how influential social media followers are. But dozens of studies
aim to figure out why consumers are mentioning, following, or
friending brands via social media.
The latest is from Empathica, which surveyed over 15,000 Americans and Canadians, to deliver its take on who's following brands and why.
Can etailers steal holiday marketshare from brick and mortar stores?
While comScore predicts holiday shoppers will spend more than $32 billion online this year, that's just a fraction of the $852 billion Deloitte expects in overall holiday spending. So what's keeping more of that money from being spent online?
Stats from Millward Brown reveal factors keeping shoppers tied to the retail store experience. They also shed light on three ways etailers can make the online shopping experience more attractive.
Gap listened to its customers, or did it?
The social mediasphere can be a cruel place for brands when they make a mistake. American clothing retailer Gap learned that the hard way when it unveiled a new logo on gap.com earlier this week.
The new logo didn't go over too well and received a hefty dose of criticism on Twitter and in the blogosphere. So yesterday Gap threw in the towel and reverted back to its old logo.
Is there a gap in Gap’s marketing?
Just last month Gap Inc continued its expansion by finally launching European e-commerce sites for both the Gap and Banana Republic brands.
It is puzzling that these brands and a number of close competitors have waited so long to take the step, but now that they have, the opportunities are immense. However, as a data marketer, I’m not so sure Gap is currently making the most of the multichannel opportunity.
Groupon and The Gap: Local coupon sites could be a bad fit for national chains
Groupon is one of the e-commerce success stories of the last year. The group buying site's revenues are skyrocketing, and its half price deal with Gap sold 441,000 units last week. That translates to $11 million in sales in one day. Groupon has now announced that more national deals will roll out soon.
This is clearly good news for Groupon. But will it be good for Groupon's partners? Maybe not.
Which retailers are still not selling online in the UK?
Gap, one of the last high street chains to sell online in this country, finally launched an e-commerce site this week.
I picked out ten well known retailers that didn't sell online two years ago, so I've been reviewing this list to see if any are still any that are missing out...
Gap UK: site review
Given the growth of e-commerce over the last decade, and its offline presence, the lack of a Gap e-commerce site in the UK has been a bit of a mystery.
This was finally rectified this week with the launch of a transactional site for Gap and Banana Republic (with a .eu domain).
I've been seeing how the new site measures up...
Groupon goes national with Gap
Group buying startups have managed to succeed where many .coms have failed before: local. By offering attractive, time-limited deals on goods and services from local vendors, companies like Groupon are proving that local commerce is as big an opportunity online as it has been hyped to be for more than a decade.
But national companies face many of the same challenges local businesses do, and on the surface, there's no reason the group buying model can't work with deals from national brands.
Gap unveils its new iPad shopping experience
Publishers have been hard at work getting products ready the iPad (and charging for them) for the past few months, but the deluge of iPad friendly publications and games has been met with silence from one sector — retail.
This week, Gap has launched a new app that shows how retailers can take advantage of the new platform — and how well free applications can thrive in the new space as well.
