 | News about digital retail commerce |  |
- Investors gamble on specialty e-commerce site Abe's Market
Abe's Market in Chicago attracted $3.4 million from a group led by Accel Partners, which also invested in Facebook and Groupon. The 17-month-old website, which sells natural soap, snacks and other products, markets mostly online and through social media. It has a growing following among "green moms" attracted to the company's products and storytelling style. Chicago Tribune (2/21)        | What are software consumers willing to pay for & why?
67% of software consumers agree that free or open source software is as good as the paid software they would have purchased. The "Consumer Software Buying Trends" research paper explores consumer attitudes on paying for online content. | | Online Retail Trends |  | | | - E-commerce players aim to succeed as "anti-Amazons"
More e-commerce startups are taking the opposite of Amazon's approach, choosing to appeal to buyers by narrowing their choices rather than offering millions of products. Sites such as 2-year-old ShoeDazzle use a combination of high-profile fashion experts and computer algorithms based on user profiles and past purchases to narrow selections. TheStreet.com (2/18) | New Media & Technology | | | | - More merchants test in-store iPads to boost sales
A growing number of retailers are using iPads and tablets to encourage gadget-savvy shoppers to spend more time in their stores, using the devices as everything from mobile catalogs that give shoppers choices beyond what's in stock to portable cash registers that speed payment and keep more staffers on the sales floor. "Everybody has something in development," said Ken Nisch, chairman of retail design firm JGA. "This is not going to be a novelty. It's going to be a sea change in how retailers transact and interact with customers." Chicago Tribune (2/20) - Report: Marketing moves from evolution to revolution
It will take more than just more investment dollars for marketers to adapt their marketing communications strategies to social and mobile channels, according to Boston Consulting Group's John Rose, whose recent report looks at new marketing realities in the digital age. "We're talking fundamental structural changes, both in terms of internal resources and in how corporate marketing organizations work with agencies and third-party services providers -- who must also change fundamentally in order to remain relevant," he said. MediaPost Communications (2/18) - Visa gears up for rollout of e-wallet technology
Visa plans to introduce a service this year that will use a memory card and short-range wireless technology to turn mobile phones into payment cards. Despite several years of hype about creating phones that let consumers leave their wallets at home, mobile makers haven't rushed to get the necessary devices to market, leaving little reason for retailers to invest in in-store mobile-payment readers. CNET/Mobile World Congress 2011 blog (2/18) - TinyPrints.com CMO shares lessons in leadership
 Laura Ching began learning lessons in leadership when she was hired at Walmart.com after business school and found that managing workers wasn't as easy as she thought, especially when it came to delivering negative feedback. As co-founder and chief marketing officer of TinyPrints.com, Ching has honed her hiring, training and reviewing skills and melded them into a fun culture where employees look forward to coming in on Monday morning. The New York Times (free registration) (2/19) | Hot Topics | | | | Top five news stories selected by Shop.org SmartBrief readers in the past week. - Results based on number of times each story was clicked by readers.
| Companies in the News | | | | - EBay and PayPal will create one platform from developer programs
EBay and PayPal developer programs will merge into one platform to make it easier for outside developers to create e-commerce applications with payment capabilities that work across many devices. "In this new environment, people want a seamless and integrated shopping and payments solution that works anytime, anywhere -- on any connected device," said lead developer Matthew Mengerink. CIO.com/IDG News Service (2/18) - Old Navy taps music app to engage consumers
Old Navy is targeting women age 23 to 35 by partnering with mobile application developer Shazam's music-identification service. The campaign offers coupons for users who identify songs and videos created for Old Navy by a music house. Consumers will be able to "tag" songs they hear on TV via their mobile devices. DMNews (2/18) | | | Most Popular Headlines from Last Week Results based on number of times each story was clicked by readers. |
| Interactive Advertising | | | | - Are targeted ads the wave of the future for mobile segment?
The burgeoning mobile ad market faces several obstacles to monetization, including competing operating systems among smartphones developed by Apple, Google and Nokia and the inability of most applications to garner a large enough audience to generate significant ad revenue. The implementation of targeted ads approved by users should help the market grow while allaying worries over privacy, according to this article. The Wall Street Journal (2/18) | Legislative & Regulatory | | | | - Tracking rules would hurt, ad and business groups advise
Proposed federal regulation that would allow consumers to opt out of tracking by advertisers would undercut the industry's voluntary efforts to that end, a coalition of advertising and business groups advised the Federal Trade Commission. A federal mandate might indicate to consumers "that they should not trust the business community or online behavioral advertising as a whole," according to the group, which included the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups. MediaPost Communications/Online Media Daily (2/18) | Shop.org Spotlight | | | | - NRF releases latest Retail Sales Outlook
 "Recent economic data indicate that we are heading into a sustainable period of expansion," says chief economist Jack Kleinhenz in NRF's most recent Retail Sales Outlook, a quarterly report on industry sales. The report analyzes the impact of key indicators such as employment and the housing market on retail sales growth. NRF members, download a free copy of the report. Learn more. - Shop.org SmartStat: Feb. 21, 2011
 Almost half of retailers surveyed made no changes to their online marketing and promotions campaign for the 2010 holidays. Source: Shop.org survey conducted by BIGresearch
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