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Have You Started Your Holiday Shopping Yet?

posted on August 17, 2010

If you’re like 35% of the population, you’ve already found a great sweater for Aunt Martha, a singing shark for Grandpa and you’ve got some ideas for the office gift exchange that you get roped into every year.

Ho, ho, ho, it’s time for holiday shopping and the fact that people are already stocking the gift cupboard means that this retail season will be much more profitable than the last.

How individual retailers fare, could be determined by how early they start preparing for holiday traffic. Stores that wait until November to put their best foot forward could end up stuck with shelves of merchandise they can’t unload.

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Best Buy Launches ShopKick Program

posted on August 16, 2010

Earlier today, we talked about how The Gap used a social media push to encourage people to step into their stores this past weekend. Now Best Buy is working on a similar idea with a decidedly “big brother” twist. Starting tomorrow, in 187 stores in major markets all over the US. They plan to follow this with an additional 70 stores by October 1.

The “shopkick” system is designed to detect and reward shoppers just for walking into a Best Buy store. In order to accomplish this feat, consumers must download an application to their smart phone. Right now the app is only available for iPhone but Android is coming soon. On the store’s end, there is a “shopkick Signal” which reaches out and talks to the application when they meet. The conversation includes information on who owns the phone that just walked in and that person gets rewards that they’re calling “kickbucks.” These bonus bucks can be collected and spent in the store as cash.

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Zagat Exclusives for the Foodie on a Budget

posted on August 13, 2010

Everyone loves a deal, even the luxury foodies that roam New York City looking for most exquisite truffled egg toast or perfectly prepared poison-free fugu. That’s why Zagat has team up with DealOn for Zagat Exclusives, the newest group-buying program to hit the web.

The new site will offer deals related only to the restaurants listed in the Zagat Guide. The program will begin this September in New York City, then the company is expected to roll out additional sites for other major cities across the US including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. Each offer will start with a fixed price then the price will drop with each person who buys the deal. This way there is no minimum number of people required to make the deal happen, but the more people, the merrier the price gets.

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ShopLocal Brings Local Circulars to Facebook and MSN

posted on August 5, 2010

shoplocalShopLocal has made the news twice this week with two major players taking on their virtual circular technology. Facebook and MSN have both begun incorporating ShopLocal apps into their systems in order to bring localized deals to the consumer.

On Facebook, ShopLocal is integrating local sales circulars into corporate fan pages. When a user visits a brand site on Facebook, the application looks at their profile to determine their geographic area then presents the proper circular for their city. Vikram Sharma, CEO of ShopLocal says;

“We know that 49 percent of visitors to corporate fan pages go there to gain information on sales and special offers and another 45 percent come to learn about products. ShopLocal’s toolkit helps retailers across the country capitalize on this social shopping phenomenon.”

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Two Companies Using Off-Line Strategies to Build Online Sales

posted on August 2, 2010

According to a survey commissioned by game company PopCap, approximately 100 million people in the US and UK alone are social gamers. Of that number, 83% said Facebook was their preferred place to play. Now here comes the important number, nearly a third (32%) of social gamers said they were likely to purchase virtual items with real-world currency.

But not everyone has the ability or is comfortable paying online, so GameStop is working on a solution that they hope will help them gain some ground in the Facebook gaming business. To promote their new game, Gangsta Zombies, GameStop is giving out promo cards in their stores that can be used as in-game currency. They’re also selling pre-paid cards that players can buy and use in lieu of a credit card or give to someone as a gift. Chris Morrison of InsideSocialGames.com says,

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ComScore Report Says Divas Drive the Dollars

posted on July 30, 2010

Divas drive the dollars.

That’s according to a new report from ComScore called Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet. The study shows that women spend 20% more time on retail websites overall than men. Not surprisingly, they lead in sales in every category except Computer Hardware/Software, Electronics, Sports/Outdoor and Music to a smaller extent. Movies is near even but when it comes to shopping for clothing online it’s women by a large margin.

comscore-shopping

Though women have been known to enjoy window shopping, in most cases they are actually spending. The ComScore report states:

“In February 2010, [women] accounted for 49.8 percent of the U.S. online population, but made up 57.9 percent of all non-travel buyers, made 61.1 percent of online purchases and accounted for 58.2 percent of online dollars.”

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Amazon and Facebook Team Up and It’s Kinda Creepy

posted on July 29, 2010

amazon-facebookAmazon began beta testing a new application this week that claims to be a simple gift suggestion engine for your family and friends. It all begins on the Amazon recommendation page. From there, you give Amazon permission to talk to Facebook and from there you get a page full of people matched with products.

At the top of the page is a list of everyone on your friends list who has a birthday coming up. Good thing I decided to try this because I totally forgot that my sister has a birthday in 4 days. It even tells me “4 days” because simply saying August 1 isn’t urgent sounding enough.