| Holiday Retail Trends | Holiday 2000 Special Report |
"Trends: Retailing for the 2000 Holiday Season" > Page 1, 2
More Trends in Retailing for
the 2000 Holiday Season
The pressure to make a profit
and improving the shopping experience are among the trends and initiatives we'll
see this holiday season. Here are more trends predicted by industry experts for
the coming season.
Profitability
Failed e-tailers, falling stock prices, loss of venture capital and pressure from stock holders are forcing Internet retailers to take a hard look at profitability, not just customer acquisition and market share.
- Bain & Company and Mainspring - Twenty percent improvement in customer service can lead to up to twenty percent increase in profit. More...
- IDC - Results from IDC's 2000 Internet Executive ePanel revealed that a respectable 55% of respondents expected their sites to be profitable by the end of the year 2000.
- McKinsey & Company and Salomon Smith Barney - In their race to gain market share of customers, most major online retailers lose money on almost every item sold, but online retailers could begin to profit on every sale if they drive up their average order size, hold the line on discounting and sell higher-margin products. More...
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Shopping
The retail sector is predicted to experience 4.5 percent growth in the fourth quarter of this year, down significantly from the 8.4 percent growth experienced in the fourth quarter of 1999, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers predictions. Internet retailing will continue to grow as the market continues to mature. The NRF is predicting a 6% growth for the GAF segments of the retail industry
- About - Holiday sales predictions from a large variety of sources, part of the Holiday 2000 Special Report. More...
- eMarketer
- The percentage of total shopping dollars spent online continues to grow.
The average U.S. Internet shopper will spend a little over one-fifth of their
total holiday spending online. More...
- Nielsen//NetRatings
- Americans continue to flock to the Web with 14 million more shoppers going
online this year compared to last year. Last year females made up 36 percent
of all shoppers; this year women make up 58 percent of the total online audience.
More...
Technology
According to IDC, the U.S. retail sector is spending 13 percent of its information technology budget on Internet related activities this year. Leveraging technology is strong trend this year. "To successfully adopt and use the Internet - or any technology - to its fullest advantage, retailers must stop looking at business strategy and technology strategy as two separate entities," says Joe McKinney, partner in the retail and consumer practice for Computer Sciences Corporation's Consulting Group.
- Sensormatic and Loss Prevention Specialists - Future retail thieves, both employees and outsiders, will increasingly use computer and emerging technologies to attack traditional and evolving retail data, assets and selling formats. More...
- Retail Info Systems and Computer Sciences Corporation - While technology has delivered many blessings to merchants, it also has created a monster that is playing havoc with traditional retail formats an business models, according to their "Retailing in e-Time" study.
| Additional Resources | |
Consumer
Connection
Keeping in front of consumer trends is an important part of being a successful
retailer. About talks with Suzanne Osborn, president of the Consumer Trends
Institute, about leading consumer trends, e-tail predictions and best-practices
for establishing strong customer relationships.
Successful
Retailing in the Internet Economy
Strategies designed to help
retailers maximize the power of the Internet to drive revenue and growth, maximize
efficiency across the organization to decrease customer acquisition costs, and
sustain the highest levels of customer satisfaction.
Trends
in Retail and E-tail
Hot retail and consumer trends and predictions collected from around the
Internet.
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Special Report Compiled by Melody Vargas |