• 61% of US taxpayers expected to file their taxes by the end of February (no procrastinating when there’s money on the table?).
• 54.4% of US taxpayers will file their taxes online this year, up from 50% last year. 
• Two-thirds of taxpayers are expecting a refund this year (down slightly from last year)…
• …which they’ll use to pay down debt (44%), put into savings (40%), use for everyday expenses (29%) or go on vacation (10%). 
• Good news for retailers:  12.5% of consumers who expect a refund “…plan to treat themselves or their families to a major purchase such as a new television, furniture or car” (to which I’d add – “hooray!”). 

See further details in the NRF press release.  And as always, please let us know your comments.

This month, Bazaarvoice will celebrate the fourth anniversary of its launch of ratings and review products. There’s no disputing that an incredible amount has happened within that time when it comes to acceptance of and technology behind ratings and reviews. Talk about the differences, then and now.

The crazy thing to think about is that just four years, nine months ago (we started our company on May 2, 2005), only three retailers in the entire United States had customer reviews on their site. Now we serve more than 50 of the top 100 retailers here, and more than 25 of the top 50 in the UK (and equal ratios in France, Germany, Australia, and a number of other countries).

What began as simply product reviews on retailer sites has expanded to a variety of types of consumer-generated content in 17 industries, 25 languages, and 36 countries. At the end of the day, Bazaarvoice is a digital reflection of word of mouth, which has always been with us since the dawn of the original bazaars (think “voice of the marketplace”). So there are many industries where word of mouth works. Today we have manufacturers gathering reviews on their own sites and sharing them with retailers to transform channel advertising on retailer sites in a world where 80% of consumers now seek reviews while shopping. Industries like financial services and health insurance, to name a few, are also increasingly requesting reviews from their consumers. We’ve also seen the quick adoption of community Q&A, where consumers can ask other consumers and brands specific, real-world questions about products or services. Even brands that don’t sell online are gathering reviews, Q&A, and shared experiences to build community on their sites. The implications all of this customer-generated content has for transforming the world of commerce as we knew it are truly profound.

We’ve been hearing for years that reviews and ratings are what the customer wants. That said, in what ways can retailers use this immediate, candid feedback for their own purposes to improve products, experiences or make major company decisions?

I’ve heard literally hundreds of stories from our clients that have used reviews and other content to improve everything from product design to shipping processes. One of the best examples is from Oriental Trading Company. They created an internal team made up of people from all over the organization who read negative reviews and changed more than 700 products to address consumer concerns.

For example, they saw that one of their teaching products, an inflatable solar system, was going “flat” very quickly, so the product had a low overall rating. They worked directly with the manufacturer to improve the product, then took new photos and wrote new website and catalog copy to better set customer expectations. Today the product is rated twice as high as it was before the changes, and earns several rave reviews.

Another good example is from Rubbermaid. They noticed low reviews on their Produce Saver product; however, their product testing had proven it worked the way it should. Reviews helped them understand that consumers didn’t understand how to best use the product, so they wrote an informative blog post and added new, clearer instructions to the package.

Do you feel the recession has impacted how today’s consumers make purchasing decisions?

The recession has definitely made consumers more carefully consider their purchases, making authentic input from other consumers even more important. The emotional pull of buyer’s remorse has never been stronger in an economy where the consumer saving rate is 5%. Yesterday’s consumer may have referenced Consumer Reports. Today’s consumer may look at Consumer Reports, talk to their neighbors, and read online reviews to make the best decisions. Nielsen reported that 81 percent of online shoppers read product or retailer reviews by other customers when doing their holiday shopping. The multichannel implications are very serious, especially when you consider how mobile is accelerating the adoption of browsing the Web to read reviews while shopping in the physical store (or at home, while browsing through a catalog).

With mobile all the buzz in retail right now, talk about MobileVoice, the platform your company launched last year.

We’re excited about MobileVoice, which lets a shopper access reviews anywhere, instantly seeing the input of thousands of consumers in the palms of their hands. Sephora launched MobileVoice and it continues to be popular with in-store shoppers, who can easily access 700,000 reviews at m.sephora.com. We’re looking forward to even more brands adding mobile reviews to help in-store shoppers make purchase decisions. You can see the huge display from 2009, when TurboTax encouraged consumers to read mobile reviews in large retail stores. Each year, they find new ways to help consumers easily access customer reviews to make purchasing decisions, and this had a huge impact.

I’m sure this is not a new question for you, but here it goes: What would you tell a retail CEO who is hesitant about implementing ratings and reviews because they are concerned about negative comments?

I’d say,

“Every day people are coming to your store and having experiences – positive and negative. You’re kidding yourself if you think all customers have great experiences, and the truth is that most unhappy customers won’t ever take the time to write a letter or complain to a manager. So, what happens? You see the negative effects in one way or another – defection to your competitors, high return rates, and decreasing sales. Why guess at what is happening when you can make it easy for consumers to communicate with you, and each other, so you can solve these problems and uncover new opportunities?

“You should also note that our research over the past four years has shown that over 80 percent of all reviews are positive – worldwide. There’s simply no reason to hide from reviews. They are proven to increase sales, decrease returns, lift customer loyalty, and transform the practices of your marketers and merchandisers. To think you can hide from the effects of word of mouth are misguided, and there is no debate about the positive, highly quantifiable effects of embracing it.”

I hear you’re about to add another title to your bio: “author.” Care to confirm/deny/elaborate?

Corporate culture is a huge passion of mine, so I’m writing a book about building a great culture. The working title is How to Make Your Company Suck Less. It’s based on my experiences in founding five companies (Bazaarvoice, Coremetrics, and three other smaller endeavors), and I’ve reached out to other CEOs and experts to interview them, too.

I’m really excited about this new endeavor, and I’m donating all of the proceeds to charity. My gift when I speak on this topic, which I’ve done about 25 times now, are CEOs telling me that our ideas made a real difference at their company. We spend most of our waking life working. Make it meaningful (and think of the powerful message in Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl)! Life’s too short…

As a member of Shop.org’s Board of Directors and regular sponsor and attendee of both Shop.org and NRF events, what are you looking forward to most about the inaugural Retail Innovation & Marketing Conference next month?

As you mentioned, this is a new event for Shop.org, and I was happy to be one of the champions for it at a Shop.org Board meeting. We are bringing together many of the most innovative minds in online retail, including the vendors that serve them and the investors that back them, to discuss what the future disruptions will be. It is based in San Francisco, on the north-end of the hub of technology innovation in the U.S., Silicon Valley. I hope this turns into a mainstay for Shop.org, and I expect it to be one of our best events ever.

In your opinion, what’s next in the world of customer-generated content?

I think we’ll see more of what Intuit recently did with TurboTax, with their Friends Like You functionality. As detailed in BrandWeek, TurboTax combined the power of consumer reviews with the influence of your friends – specifically, Facebook friends. With Friendalyzer, you can see which TurboTax products your friends used and read their reviews directly on the TurboTax site, while you’re trying to determine the best product to use. It truly customizes and personalizes reviews for consumers, and I think there is much more of this type of integration to come. You can find people in situations like yours – new baby, bought a house, etc. – and learn about their experience with TurboTax. The mass of reviews will continue to let consumers hone in on opinions that are most relevant to their own. Seth Greenberg, director of national media and digital marketing for Intuit, will share his learning at our upcoming Social Commerce Summit in April.

As a young entrepreneur, you’ve received incredible accolades from the business community. What guidance or tips would you give people who are thinking about starting their own businesses?

You have to have passion and follow your dreams. You have to be 100% committed to reaching your goals. I started programming at age 7 and I’m 38 today. While that may sound cool now, it wasn’t when I was growing up in Texas (in the days where it was football or nothing for boys). But I feel very lucky to have found my passion at such a young age. Find yours!

Also, don’t ever be afraid to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you are – there’s always something new to learn. If you ever reach a feeling of “you know it all,” you are in for a hard fall eventually. Or, worse, you’ll never take risks in life. Several of my mentors are in their 60s and financially they’ve proven a lot, but they are always humble and always learning.

First and foremost, put people and culture first. When you find passionate, smart, energetic people, take care of them and realize that culture needs to be nurtured constantly. Companies have a soul – nourish it. Unless you run a company that is powered 100% by robots (except for yourself, of course), you have to learn how to motivate people.

Give me your best sales pitch on the reasons to visit – or live in – your hometown of Austin, Texas.

What can I say? Austin is so cool – talk about a city that generates great word of mouth (just listen to passengers on a flight to Austin). There’s a vibe in Austin that attracts smart, creative people and lets them be themselves. Cost of living is great here (allowing you to focus on more fulfillment in life than the Maslow hierarchy-driven shelter), and it’s a great environment for entrepreneurs because of the beautiful surroundings, live music, and just a wealth of things to do and see at any time (SXSW, for one, is coming up). I was born here and although I’ve lived in San Francisco and Philadelphia (both great experiences in my life), I’m glad to be back. Even as Austin has grown exponentially, there’s still this laid-back feeling and friendliness to the city that makes it unique. People really help each other here – there is a real sense of community.

I read an interview where you said your first job was working at your parents’ furniture store. What did those experiences teach you about retail?

I read Sam Walton’s book, Made in America, when I was at The Wharton School earning my MBA. He was the leader I chose to do a report on for my Leadership & Teamwork class. Sam’s key to success was that he spent a lot of time in his stores, and his competitors’ stores, observing real-world customer behavior. Growing up in my parents’ store, I did the same. But I also spent over 20,000 hours programming from ages 7 to 21. So I blended my two passions – retail and technology – and never looked back. Coremetrics provided the “eyes” you needed to observe in-store behavior (on the Web). Bazaarvoice provided the “mouth” and “ears.” At the end of the day, most Web innovations can be tied to offline innovations. Google is the world’s biggest and most efficient Yellow Pages. Facebook is the world’s biggest High School Yearbook, cocktail party, conference, or dinner between two friends. Bazaarvoice is the “voice of the marketplace.”

If you could have dinner with six people in the world, who would you pick and why? And where would you take them?

Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Sam Walton, Warren Buffett, Eric Schmidt, and Bill Gates. They are all great leaders and have ultimately served the world, and society, with great humility. Bill may be a controversial choice given some of Microsoft’s past competitive tactics, but I really respect how he is dedicating the entire second phase of his life to serving the global community instead of selfishly bathing in his riches. We only live once, and the ultimate goal is to create Heaven on Earth.

You seem to be constantly moving in a million different directions. How do you unwind?

At the end of the day, my biggest motivation is my family. My daughter, Rachel, is 5 years old and our son, Levi, is 6 months old. My wife, Debra, and I have been married for almost 14 years and she has been an amazing life partner. There is nothing more important to me than the three of them. We often spend vacation time together in Hawaii. There is no better place to unwind with family than Maui. It has it all – varied terrain from beaches to mountains, great food, breathtaking sunsets, perfect weather, and friendly people.

A side note: unlike many of the studies that Shop.org commissions, this survey is not specific to the Web. However, the results are entirely relevant to online retailers as consumers increasingly shop across channels. (For the flip side of the coin, I recommend reading also the list of consumer “untouchables”(i.e. what they absolutely won’t give up) that STORES magazine published in this month’s issue.)

So – we first asked consumers “As a result of the recession, which of the following major (big dollar) purchases are you waiting to make?” Top of the list: vacation travel, which over a third of consumers is putting off for now, with women taking a somewhat harder line than men on this luxury. Interestingly, income doesn’t seem to be the only deciding factor on this item – somewhat more high income earners ($50+K per annum) are putting off vacations than are those consumers earning less.

Next on the chopping block for approximately one quarter of consumers: major home improvement or repair projects (the irony here being that some contractors likely now have more time to return calls and maybe even negotiate, unlike in boom years past), furniture, a TV, a computer, and home appliances. Again, consumer segments reveal some differences for each of these. For example, 29% of 18 to 34 year olds are waiting to buy a new computer (presumably the old one works fine?) but just 17% of consumers aged 55 and older are putting off this purchase. Ditto for furniture. A quarter of consumers earning less than $50K per year is putting off buying a new TV, compared with one fifth of those earning more (perhaps the latter already bought a great TV not long before the economy took a tumble?).

What about purchases that consumers had in mind to purchase at some point but now think they may never make at all? Overall, vacation travel (25%) and major home improvements / repairs (20.3%) appear furthest out of reach for some consumers. Perhaps not surprisingly, one quarter of consumers aged 18 to 34 think they may never buy a house, more so than all other age groups. The good news: overall, few consumers seem to think they’ll never be able to buy new big ticket items such as consumer electronics (e.g. a digital camera, a DVD player, etc.), jewelry, furniture, and the like – even if a few are putting off those purchases for the immediate time.

Shop.org Members can download the full, segmented results now. Let me know your thoughts and comments!

As it turns out, NRF research partner BIGresearch asked consumers this very question in September (“What sign do you believe will best demonstrate to you that the recession is over?”).  The one word summary answer:  jobs!   Approximately three-quarters of consumers surveyed checked “Unemployment levels decline”.  Interestingly, this signal is the same across party lines (Republican, Democrat, and Independent).  By comparison, Wall Street stock indexes (9%) or a declaration to this effect from either President Obama (4.7%) or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (3.5%) don’t hold a candle to actual improvements in the national job situation. 

To see the full results of this survey, please see the BIGresearch press release issued in October, and see the NRF commentary on NRF’s Big Retail Blog from earlier this week also.

Have you seen the shopping habits of customers change as a result of the recession?

We have seen changes in how customers are shopping. The footwear industry has seen a pullback due to economic uncertainty and unemployment. What is great for us is that kids continue to change size and our children’s business is doing well — even in a recession.

We’ve recently seen a lot of favorable macro-economic data (GDP and other leading indicators) that suggests that the recession may be ending soon, but this was a consumer-led recession and the high levels of unemployment currently at play could slow the recovery on Main Street and at retail. Employment growth is really a necessary factor for vibrant growth in the consumer sector.

As a lower-priced brand, one might argue that Payless is well-positioned when people are trading down, but that customers might disappear when the recession ends. How is the company trying to hook consumers to ensure they’ll stick around even when the economy bounces back?

We are well positioned. We’ve actually gained market share, driven in large part by our success in our children’s category. Cross-channel shopping is not as prevalent in all footwear categories, and the trade-down effect for us is somewhat mitigated by heavy discounting in the off-price channel.

Our strategy, regardless of the economic climate, is to remain focused on the consumer. And we are attracting new shoppers every day with our newest brands like the Zoe & Zac green brand, the Unforgettable Moments by Lela Rose special occasion line and the Christian Siriano for Payless designer brand, among others. We can be successful if we understand our customers’ needs and desires, and then find innovative ways to deliver great product in a special and dynamic way and provide an outstanding, thoughtful experience in our stores. As well, our CRM capabilities have grown beyond our expectations in the last few years, and are providing us with meaningful new insights on how to reach and connect with our customers on a deeper level.

Just a few weeks ago, Collective Brands re-launched its website. Tell me about some of the new bells and whistles, as well as why you moved forward with a redesign during an economy like this one.

Since Collective Brands was formed, we have worked hard at developing our strategy, building our dynamic teams, positioning our brands and integrating our company to provide a powerful platform for our individual brands to leverage as they execute their unique strategies for their target customers. The core strength of Collective Brands is the world-class brands that are platformed by shared resources and infrastructure in the global marketplace. We have made tremendous progress, and we have a great story to tell about what a dynamic business Collective Brands has become. The new website is designed to provide our core audiences — potential associates , investors, media, business partners, and others — with a resource that fully illustrates the vision, strategy and story of CBI through a web experience that is engaging, informative and compelling. Many people have an incomplete understanding of Collective Brands, and this new site provides a singular place that communicates the breadth of the businesses and brands, the character of the company. While CBI is only two years old, we have a rich heritage and diversity of brands, products and people.

I see that people can become a fan of Payless on Facebook or follow it on Twitter. What are your thoughts on the role that social media is playing in retail right now?

Social media is clearly an innovative new way to reach customers, and like any consumer engagement tool, we want to be thoughtful in our approach to make the experience meaningful. We want to utilize the forum to listen and engage and interact.

One of the programs that Payless is involved with is Shoes4Kids, which will donate more than 77,000 pairs of shoes to children this holiday season. Tell me a little about the program.

Payless Gives is a program that I’m very proud of. It really started last year with an idea…a “what if?” What if we were to give away $1 million worth of free new shoes to kids in need during the holidays? Could we do it, and if so, how? I posed this question to our leadership team, who really stepped up and rallied around this important holiday giving idea. In just weeks, we organized a massive grassroots campaign, secured nearly 3,000 applicants, selected more than 630 charity partners, sent them the coupons and the kids started shopping! It was a groundbreaking campaign.

There is a massive need for children’s shoes and we are in a strong position to help out. But the need is 10 times what we did last year…and it’s international. So this year, we expanded beyond just the U.S. to Canada, Puerto Rico and in 10 Latin American countries where our stores are located. We expect to give away more than 77,000 pairs of free new shoes valued at more than $1.2 million through a network of hundreds of localized charities. Oct. 30 is the application deadline for charities, and we are wanting as many charity partners as possible to apply to help us create an extensive and wide-reaching network to get the shoes into the hands of children that need them the most. The grassroots approach is important because it ensures widespread and diverse coverage in urban and rural areas. And it helps support the localized nonprofits — the smaller charities — which are seeing less funding support as well, due to the economic crisis.

Information on how non-profit organizations can apply and the selection criteria can be found on our site, www.paylessgives.com.

I recently read about a new line of Stride Rite shoes, which helps children just learning to walk. Tell me about the new shoes.

Collective Brands is committed to product innovation, and this is a strong example of how our Stride Rite team is using innovation and technology to create products that really make a difference to our customers. Stride Rite partnered with the prestigious Leon Root, M.D. Motion Analysis Laboratory at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York to better understand the effects of footwear at the important learning-to-walk stage of a child’s development. The research enabled the Stride Rite team to create a new collection of footwear for toddlers featuring a patent-pending innovation called Sensory Response Technology that helps guide young children to walk in the healthiest way possible. This groundbreaking line of footwear was launched this fall, and is gaining market share and validating Stride Rite’s premium brand position as the premier brand to promote healthy feet for children.

I hear you make regular visits to your stores. What do you learn from those experiences and why do you think interacting with customers is so important?

Getting to the stores is critical. It is where our customers come and our people interact with them. When I visit stores, my approach is to listen, observe and ask questions — to get first-hand insights. Besides, it’s the place where people are having the most fun so I truly enjoy it.

You’ve had some incredible experiences at well-known retailers like J. Crew, Cole Haan, Revlon and Tommy Hilfiger. What did those different positions teach you?

We learn from all of our experiences. The commonality I’ve found in all my career experiences has been to know, respect and entice the customer with great product that is well presented and valued. Make sure you have a thoughtful feedback loop and keep your head up as you look forward, while also understanding the road your brand and business has traveled. Make sure you know what makes each brand and retail destination special and unique in the market. Amplify that uniqueness and keep it focused on its core. The business of retail and brands is fun and challenging work that is immensely invigorating and fulfilling.

What would you say to anyone considering a career in retail?

Stay focused on the customer. They hold the key to any retailer or brand success. Be ready for dynamic action, pace and change. It’s a great place to be creative, work with teams and build. It’s also great because if you make a mistake you can mark it down, learn from it and move on.

Which leaders do you look to for inspiration and what traits do they possess that you try to emulate?

People who are focused on the consumer, who master the fundamentals, respect the teams they work with and drive to the win.

What shoes are you wearing right now?

Sperry Top-Sider dress loafers. I am in here in the our global headquarters offices today, but when I am in my Sperry’s I can take a moment to think of a great day on the water.

The most interesting trend for the online folks is likely this one:

#8: When looking at store sales, consider the Internet. The web will influence one in three holiday purchases this year, and retailers are using the Internet not only as a sales channel but also as a marketing vehicle. (Those of you at the Shop.org Summit who heard Terry Lundgren’s keynote got a first-hand account of how this happens at Macy’s.) Keep an eye out for Shop.org’s eHoliday survey, which will provide more insight on how people will to shop online this holiday season as well as what online retailers are planning. Hint: hello, social media!

Other holiday-related items that might be appealing:

• A short video of how different shoppers plan to compensate for the economy this holiday season
• Audio from the briefing, if you have 45 minutes to listen to the complete Top 10 rundown
• NRF’s first holiday survey, which outlines shoppers’ holiday plans

A couple of highlights:

While many retailers would probably like to put behind them the past year as quickly as possible, fully 87% of the online retailers we surveyed noted that their eCommerce business in 2008 was, in fact, profitable – and for over half it was actually more profitable than in 2007. When we probed how retailers accomplished this feat, over half credited putting a strong focus on preserving margin. While increased promotions also played a role, retailers played up the “value” message on their Web sites, worked hard to grow market share, and targeted profitable transactions and/or customers, among other measures.

Site conversion rates actually increased for almost half of retailers surveyed; while there is still work to do for everyone when it comes to shopping cart abandonment, returns on average are still respectable. And while over half of these retailers believe the economy should improve somewhat in the next year, they’re largely sticking with or even slightly lowering their outlook for their business for the next year.

True multichannel operations are increasingly a reality, not just a goal, for many retailers. Whether sharing product or branding imagery across channels, tapping email to promote in-store events and specials, or using marketing messages to distinctly promote multiple channels, we see those old channel silos slowly starting to crumble in earnest. And it’s not just a breakthrough on the marketing side of the house – executives in numerous functions are increasingly responsible and rewarded for driving results across multiple channels.

Finally, social media – retailers are, it appears, a pioneering bunch (and, we found, not because senior management is pressuring them on this point). If a retailer isn’t already on Facebook or tweeting, it’s likely on the drawing board for either the remainder of this year or certainly next. Two-thirds of retailers surveyed noted that the ROI from social marketing initiatives may be as yet unclear, but almost as many agreed that the reason they are pursuing them is because “it is a great time to experiment and learn more about what they can do.”

Shop.org Members can download the full report now. Be sure also to check out Ellen Davis’ blog from the Annual Summit about Sucharita Mulpuru’s keynote presentation that referenced some of these SORO findings along with much more.

We’ve just concluded our Q3 survey and it appears that the gradual improvement we’ve seen quarter over quarter this year is continuing (see a recap of the numbers and a summary of the results). 70 retailers responded to our most recent quarterly (anonymous) one-question survey that asked simply, “How did your gross online sales (top line) for the period July 1 through September 30, 2009 perform relative to the same period last year?” Some highlights:

• The average growth for gross online sales in Q3 of ’09 compared to Q3 of ’08 was 16%.
• Almost three-quarters of retailers surveyed reported experiencing some YOY growth for the quarter.
• Large and medium sized retailers overall did well, as did half of the retailers who identified themselves as generating annual online sales of $10 million or less.
• Multi-channel retailers and manufacturers who participated in the survey also reported largely doing well, along with half of those identifying themselves as online-only retailers.

As part of the survey, we invite participants to note any (optional) comments about the quarter, such as trends that they’re seeing. It’s of course difficult to generalize from comments across retailers of different sizes and types of companies, but some multichannel retailers with primarily store-based operations noted things like average order value AOV staying either flat or declining somewhat, while also experiencing increased traffic and longer purchase cycles as consumers shop around more and wait for discounts. Multi-channel retailers with primarily online-based operations noted some of the same, including seeing increased traffic as consumers shopped around significantly before actually committing to a given purchase.

Calling all retailers: we need your participation in our upcoming holiday sales flash surveys. Please email me if you didn’t receive an email to participate in this last round, and I will add you to our list. As always, the more retailers who participate, the more granular the results we can report back to you. Thank you for supporting Shop.org research!

We’ll wrap up the series of posts we’ve pulled together this year on international e-commerce by highlighting some of the dialogue that the study stirred up.

One of the best comments came from a CEO-guy across the table who attended the session where Jim Okamura hit the highlights of the study and interviewed the esteemed panelists.  He had that slightly worn look one has at the last session of the last day, but he was totally into the idea of going global.

Finally he looked over at his VP of e-Commerce and said “Let’s just do this.”

The International Growth Story

Chris O’Neill, who runs Google’s retail practice, was a welcome opening host for the session.  He set that stage nicely by commenting that:

• Well over 50% of Google’s growth is from markets outside the U.S.
• In order for Google’s CEO to approve any program, it must have a global plan
• From an organizational perspective, discussions about international initiatives often revolve around the trade-offs between centralization and de-centralization

What should we watch for on the international front? According to O’Neill, innovations in payments “in a world without the financial payment infrastructure the U.S. takes for granted.”

And stay tuned for how machine translations will fulfill the vision of a border-less e-commerce landscape and where advancements in analytics will leverage data to understand international customer needs that are not being met.

A New Chapter in the Customer Experience Saga

Of the many barriers the study highlighted, the one that requires the most urgent attention is the generally poor online experience that most international shoppers encounter, an ironic similarity to the early days of e-commerce in the U.S. the study points out.

Another key finding was that an expanded range of strategic options has replaced the “all or nothing” mindset that until recently prevailed among international strategists.  Each option has its own different risk/reward profile and collectively, they provide online retailers and consumer brands greater strategic flexibility, which is critical in today’s challenging retail environment.

A “middle” stage of international e-commerce expansion is emerging, which the study calls the “Participatory” stage.  Aided in part by the emergence of “sell-and-ship” solutions providers, this stage offers online retailers a low-cost, low-risk way to dramatically improve the international customer experience while also ramping up global sales.

Global Logistical Expertise is Evolving Regionally

An interesting ancillary finding emerged on the expo floor at the Summit.  As one visited the vendors that are opening doors to international e-commerce, one found that those with logistical expertise currently tend to specialize in different regions of the world.

Not surprisingly CanadaPost/Borderfree excels in Canada while Pitney Bowes (e4x/fiftyone’s logistical partner) delivers the goods throughout Europe.

Access Technology Solutions has built a sophisticated network of trade channels and customs brokerages throughout Asia-Pacific. In fact you can ship express packages from the U.S. into Japan for about what it costs to ship from California to New York. And it can get there quicker.

Meanwhile Borderjump/Aeropost is fulfilling thousands of international orders daily throughout South America.  Look for some consolidation in this sector in the year ahead, but for now, choose your market and go with the strongest player in that region.

Social and Mobile: Hot Panel Topics

No way can we hope to pack in highlights from the report’s findings plus insights from the panel session at the Summit into this no-longer-short post.  Several quick take-aways for you.

One of the biggest challenges of going global is balancing existing brand equity/controls with the need for local relevance.  The panelists agreed that tracking and measuring brand equity is tough globally, especially in the Asia-Pacific regions.

However, social media is evolving as a means to cost-effectively tap communities and facilitate word-of-mouth ─ and by doing so, to better understand how to adapt brands to local market preferences.

Panelists also agreed that having a mobile strategy is an essential component of going global.  Depending on which international market you target, expect 20% to 40% of the traffic coming to your site to originate from mobile devices ─ and plan for women to over-index on mobile.

Organizational Catalysts?

The panelists provided advice for e-commerce professionals trying to push their leadership to go global.  After conducting initial market assessments, focus on understanding the types of payments that are locally relevant.

Accept that payment models will not be one-size-fits-all.  In China, expect to accept at least five types of payment.  In Germany, more than half your holiday orders may go out with an open invoice.

Next Stop: Monaco, October 26-28th

It’s always intriguing when you put almost a year into conducting a study and then it’s done.  But of course research is never really done, in fact, we’ve barely written the first chapter of the international e-commerce expansion story.

The next chapters will provide different viewpoints.  The Shop.org Global e-Commerce Summit will offer a diverse collection of best practices and insights from leading global e-commerce professionals outside the U.S.

And look for a quantitative study exploring international e-commerce expansion from the J.C. Williams team next spring, with a focus on how online merchants of different sizes are mastering global e-commerce.

Until then, enjoy the International E-commerce Expansion Benchmark Study, the most uncreatively-titled report out there today.

Thanks,

The J.C. Williams Group

It’s no secret that today’s shoppers are cutting back, she said, but research also shows they feel good about it. “Today’s consumers are wearing this new frugality as a badge of honor,” Mooney said, citing a McKinsey study that 55% of Americans are cutting back not out of necessity, but by choice. Even people who can afford to shop feel a pressure to scale back, she said, which understandably creates challenges for retailers.

“We had a lot of women telling us they were shopping online because they didn’t want friends to see, didn’t want it to be as obvious,” Mooney said. “There’s a whole secret shopper emerging, which is why sites like Gilt are rising to the top.”

Although 75% of teens receive the same or more of an allowance compared with last year, unemployment for this group has reached an all-time high, forcing them to be more resourceful in finding ways to make money and forcing them to resort to swapping and selling items in order to buy more. (I loved this quote: “They have rediscovered all the junk in their house that has value.”) Some teens are also doing “online chores,” Mooney said, uploading photos from a family camera to the computer, burning CDs, helping parents with their taxes (!) and undertaking other projects that parents either don’t know how to do or simply don’t want to undertake.

Unlike their older siblings, who were part of the over-coddled Gen Y, today’s teens are savvy about money and are serious about looking for good deals, Mooney said. “Teens have discovered online research, clearance racks, coupons, selling and swapping,” she said. “They are mimicking their parents. They have discovered the tools of the web because they have to.”

Moms are also significantly worried about the economy, she said, and are focused on setting a good financial example to their kids. In a perverse way, research found, some moms actually feel liberated by the economic downturn because they no longer feel a pressure to spend more than they should or keep up with the neighbors like they used to. As one mom profiled in a resource Interactive video said, “It took the recession to scale back but we should have been doing it anyway.”

Much like teens, moms are also focused on finding good deals and rely considerably on coupons. (This is similar to what we heard from Dawn Lepore yesterday.) Coupon sites are the second only to job sites as the most-visited web category, Mooney said, and retailers should use that knowledge to look for opportunities to help her save money.

Moms are also trading down – and many of them are trading way down. Several of the women profiled in the videos were trading down from Nordstrom to Payless or North Face to Champion. While this is most definitely a challenge, Mooney said, it is also an opportunity, providing retailers with new ways to serve existing customers, or opportunities to gain new ones. (Teens, by the way, aren’t trading down – they know what they like – but they are spending less.)

Her advice to retailers? Find ways to innovate your way out of the recession. From Jansport integrating Facebook onto its website to American Apparel’s “rummage sale” and Hyundai’s “assurance” program, there are myriad ways for retailers to dig deeper and be creative.

One other key to make it out of this recession? If you fail, fail quickly. “Fail quickly, learn, test, and launch,” Mooney said. “Being agile is going to be the key.”

Company sales have been robust, despite the economy, but its customers are hardly sheltered from the downturn: though over-the-counter product sales rose 11% in the second quarter, the company saw the average order decline one percent during the same period of time, Lepore said.

But what’s been most fascinating to watch this year, Lepore offered, is not how much less people are spending but the shift in what they’re buying. “The big changes came not in the bottom line but in the personal preferences and habits we saw among shoppers,” she said, noting that sales of private label products grew close to 40% in the first quarter.

“It’s indisputable that the recession triggered a lot of cost-conscious behavior, and I think this might be the latest chapter in an online revolution,” Lepore said. “I’ve seen the habits, comfort level and shopping behavior change considerably among our shoppers, and it’s been a fascinating study.”

So what do people buy in a recession? For starters, sales of sleep aids are up 22% this year, as are sales of teeth whiteners (up 28%) and nutritional supplements (up 27%). A victim of the economy? Diet aids, which are down 13%. As Lepore reasoned: “If you can’t spend money, you certainly don’t want to stop eating at the same time.”

It’s also no surprise that, in a recession, shoppers love coupons. While sites like Coupon Cabin and Coupons.com saw increases in sales, Lepore needed to look no farther than their own coupon site, where manufacturer coupon redemption rose 198% (no, that’s not a typo) in the first half of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008. (And in case you think that’s because the company offered twice as many coupons, it’s not: Lepore said the number of coupons offered was only up 26%.) Coupons have been so successful for the company, they have begun to offer them on Twitter, and the response has been positive.

While the jury is still out on how consumers have fundamentally changed as a result of the recession, Lepore sees shoppers both trading up and trading down over the long-term. “Today and every day at drugstore.com we’re watching women put a $95 facial peel in a basket beside special-offer Pampers and buy one, get one 50% off Maybelline mascara,” she said. “The lesson to me is clear: don’t assume that some group of shoppers can’t shop with you. You have to support your customer by understanding the full range of tastes and preferences they want to express. Shoppers are smarter, they’re more independent. The old assumptions about who buys what just don’t work anymore.”

Lepore also cautioned retailers against trying to squeeze their customers into preconceived categories: working mothers, teens, value shoppers, prestige-brand buyers. “Increasingly, shoppers refuse to be pigeonholed according to budget or style,” she said. “The old caste system for shoppers has broken down; we see it in our shopping baskets every day.”

When asked if recent consumer shopping patterns provided any insight on if the economy was turning a corner, Lepore was understandably reluctant to declare an end to the recession. But she did give the crowd a dose of optimism by sharing a potential early sign: discretionary purchases are showing a slight uptick. Specifically, she offered, sales of electronic toothbrushes are rising.

Macy’s foray into global retailing:

In February of next year, we’re opening our first international Bloomingdale’s in Dubai. This will get our toe in the water on the subject of international expansion. We’re doing exploratory work and we’ll get our first sense of it in February. You can argue that the timing is not perfect but of course, these decisions are made years in advance. I think the same is true now – if you make a decision today that you want to open a store in some other country, you’re looking at 2-3 years from now. You must be looking forward to possibilities. In our case, international expansion is one of the topics on our mind.

The importance of rallying around a cause:

You can’t do a bazillion campaigns – you have to pick your shots. We ask our customers and our employees and try to zero in. We did some focus on Earth Day and breast cancer has been a big issue for us. Over the last 12 months, we’ve raised $4 million for national parks association, $6.5 million for Reading is Fundamental, and our Make-A-Wish “Believe” campaign from last holiday season raised over $8 million in the last year.

I think it’s important because a lot of these nonprofits are really hurting right now. For the Come Together campaign specifically, we learned that the food lines are growing by 30% in America. People are showing up [to food banks] in suits and career apparel…pounding the streets, trying to get a job.

These subjects are important. I think doing them right, picking your shots and doing them big is the way to go.

His “trigger moment” on the purpose and power of the Internet:

I made zero money on the rush before 2000 when internet stocks were going like crazy. I really honestly did not get it. I just said, “How do you have a sustained business model that doesn’t make any money?” There wasn’t a business model that made any sense. At that point, it was books and CDs. I would say that I had my intentions but I knew a different kind of business model had to occur. Of course that’s happened.

About eight years ago, I was speaking at an NRF conference in New York and I was asked a question from the audience. I’ll never forget this guy – he was a retailer and he said, “don’t you worry that by focusing on macys.com that your customers will start shopping there instead of your stores?”

“No!” I said. “What I’m worried about is that they’re going to shop somewhere else online and not with me. That’s what I worry about.”

There’s definitely a consumer who loves to shop online, and we’re not going to move her. So I’d say about 8 years ago, I put the gauntlet down and said, “we’re not just going to be into this, we’re going to be aggressive.” And I feel really good about all that we’ve built.

Why he doesn’t tweet:

About nine months ago I registered but I’ve intentionally never tweeted. I think that it’s fascinating first of all to watch people who apparently have all this time. I don’t.

Whether Twitter is here to stay:

I think it will be here to stay if it remains authentic. I worry that some of the people you follow are busy. I worry that the authenticity gets lost.

His philosophy on negative reviews:

If you start getting bad reviews on a particular product…guess what? The product is bad! It’s not the customer.

To me, all product reviews are good. When they’re bad, you have to get it off the site, get rid of the product. We do that.

Macy’s localization approach:

I think the biggest change we’ve undertaken is consolidating to one organization structure based in New York City but supplementing needs with 69 districts around the country. We have 17-20 people living and working in 69 cities, they supervise 10-11 stores. They’re in each of those 10 stores every other week. That’s when we’re getting close to our customer. Feeding that information through the technology we’ve developed is gigantic. I’m just so confident that’s going to pay dividends as we begin to execute over the course of time. In the 20 cities we localized a year ago in May, those stores are out-performing the rest of the country. To me, that’s the biggest transformational change we’ve made.

Whether the customer has fundamentally changed:

That’s a big question. I don’t know the answer and you don’t either. We’re going to look back at this time and say how great this was that we were in this era. People will say the economy is bad in 2021 and you’ll be able to say, “Well, I remember back in 2009…now that was a tough year.” You’ll be able to say you got through that.

I think the customer clearly changed this past year. Think about the Lehman Brothers collapse, the beginning of the end of the world. Shortly after that, retail was clearly affected. Consumers figured out this was not a short-term issue. It did have a fundamental change on the way people felt about job security and personal wealth, whatever income bracket they were in.

Historically, consumers have returned to their shopping habits of the past. They like the quality of the clothes they’re wearing, they like the brands, the handbags that they’ve carried. Historically, they have come back over time. Of course everybody’s questioning whether this will be that same experience or not. You can predict all you want, but none of you know.

What we have to do is adjust to how she does choose to shop. In stores like ours, I do think that we can win both ways. We can win over the customer who is trading down or can win over a customer with a brand like Coach and its Poppy collection.

If department stores are dead:

When I graduated from college at the University of Arizona, I decided to take this job at Bullock’s, and a professor said, “Aren’t department stores dead?” That was 1975.

The business we’re in is challenging and I believe there’s going to be a market share challenge for the next year to 18 months. There’s no reason to believe there’s going to be a hockey stick rebound for our economy because the jobs aren’t there to support that kind of growth. But I do believe that a department store that offers all of the convenience and is focused on obvious value not only can survive but also has a chance to thrive in the future.

Of what he’s most proud:

After being with Bullock’s for a year and a half, I was hand-writing transfers from one store to another and I was really bored. And so I went to the head of HR and I said to Gene Ross, “listen I’m bored to death.” He had this sign in his office that said, “Bloom where you are planted” – which I took to mean, basically, shut up and get back to work. I can honestly say that ever since that moment, my perspective changed. I focused on the job I was in instead of focusing on my next job, and things just kind of worked for me.

But the bigger your job gets, the more you get the credit. I have a great team and the only way you can get things done is to surround yourself with really great people. I am super-fortunate to have a team of hard-working people and I’m most proud of that.

Let’s begin with some exciting company news. Tell me about some new projects in the works, including Jetsetter.

We’re launching a new platform in mid-October, which is a way to be able to surface some of the new categories we’ve been exploring. It won’t feel like a different experience for you if you’re coming in by email, but it does allow for a lot easier navigation and cross-promotion of some of the new sites.

We are going to be launching Jetsetter.com. It is like Gilt in many ways; it’s a flash-sale site. There’s a lot of great, great inventory out there, and we’re presenting an edited selection of experiences for people. We’ve done three or four test sales and they’ve been very successful.

In a Forbes article which ran last fall announcing your new position, you said you were already a fan of the company and that you “understand why members describe it as an addiction.” What do you think makes it so darned addictive?

Gilt did not feel like other e-commerce sites, which have a left-hand navigation and are very much products of the internet. This felt like something that was more editorial, yet had a very simple user interface. It was gorgeous, it was beckoning, and it was easy: two clicks and I was on a product detail page, two clicks and I could buy. That simple, fast fun is really something that I think they’ve done brilliantly, long before I came.

The longer that I played with it and the longer I’ve watched our members’ behavior, I think there are a number of things that are addictive: it is appointment shopping, it’s new every day. You know what brands are going to be sold but you don’t know what’s going to be inside the sale, so it’s like opening a present. There is that thrill of the hunt, thrill of the chase, and there’s a certain kind of gaming almost about this process. Gilt is bringing fun and excitement back to shopping, and I think that’s a large part of the appeal.

Do you believe your customers are drawn to the exclusivity of a shopping club or do you think Gilt would be as successful if it was an open e-commerce site?

I think there’s definitely something about it being invitation-only that makes it special. Anyone who has ever been to a live sample sale knows that there is a certain allure to the fact that you’ve been one of the lucky ones who’s chosen. And it does make you go that day, and there’s definitely something to the fact that this is an invitation-only site.

Before taking the reins at Gilt Groupe last fall, you spent nearly four years as the head of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. What were some of the biggest challenges in making the transition from a media company to e-commerce?

The Martha Stewart company is media and merchandising; they’re almost equal parts. That was my first merchandising experience, though the e-commerce part of that was a very small part of our overall revenues. The biggest shift or transition was really from a more mature company to a start-up that was really in hypergrowth. That was a truly revolutionary change for me on many levels.

Some have said that sites like Gilt, ideeli and Rue La La are well-positioned now, when the economy is suffering, but that it may be difficult to sustain this growth when the economy rebounds. What are your thoughts?

Nobody knows, ultimately, but there has always been a big industry around excess goods. Many brands have a large outlet business. This is not only something that emerged during this economic downturn; it’s been part of the life cycle of goods forever.

I think the bigger factor is who gets the great goods, and will people be cutting much more tightly as they go forward. So far we’re not seeing that. Certainly there aren’t as many excess goods in the overall marketplace, but that’s not a bad thing for us.

NRF has a Port Tracker report where we look at traffic coming into the nation’s ports. What we found this year is that retailers were cutting back inventory to about 2002 levels. Have you seen that affect business?

No. This is a huge industry, and we are not a billion-dollar company yet. It’s not impacting us.

On some levels, it’s actually better for us because I think there is less great inventory out there and I think we’ve got the best assortment. I think retailers’ inventory levels are maybe even a positive for us in the coming year. We have a lot of good brand relationships and we’ve got customers who know what they like and keep coming back.

During your session at the Summit, you will be talking about how viral marketing brings in new customers. Can you elaborate on this?

The biggest element of our marketing that our company benefits from is our “invite a friend.” We still bring in well over half of our members every year through invite a friend. It’s a hugely valuable marketing tool for so many reasons, not the least being that you tend to open things from a friend a lot more quickly and a lot more readily than if it’s coming from some institution.

You spent many years in the entertainment industry before your recent foray into retail. While those industries are different in many ways, several smart retail executives I’ve talked to say that retail is really just repackaged entertainment. What do you think?

That’s absolutely right. I think the best retailers do view their stores as a show. You have to grab your customers in the first act – when they walk through the door. Whatever they see first is critically important. Making sure that they stay, essentially, and going further into that stage is just as important.

I actually did one interview where, without thinking about it, I really was talking about what we do every day as entertainment. The interviewer challenged me and said, “You haven’t gotten out of your old way of thinking.” That may be true, but I do see so many elements of what we bring to people every day as being very similar to actually programming a network. Every day there’s a new show.

Do any retailers come to mind who do “entertainment” really well?

Offline, I think J. Crew has done a great job. The Collection store on 79th Street and Madison is fantastic and really well thought-out. They’ve taken a really smart, edited selection of their product and they have created a store that is for that Upper East Side customer. It feels completely different in there. I think Zara has a really great online store, and it’s even more interesting because it’s lower priced products.

In an interview with Advertising Age several years ago, a colleague illustrated your “unflappable” demeanor with a story about how, when you were pregnant, you made sure staff got to a screening before you headed to the hospital to have your baby. True story or urban legend?

Actually, I went to the screening with them and realized, “I can’t sit through this.” I went to my doctor’s office and my daughter was born about 20 minutes later.

Gilt is growing quickly while many retailers are shedding jobs. Can you share any insight about the company for people who may be interested in applying for one of your dozens of open positions?

We have 104 open positions right now at every level – we’ve got openings for stylists and art directors at our photo studios, we’ve got openings for warehouse employees and we’ve got openings for senior buyers and senior marketing executives. It’s a big range. We’ve been hiring very quickly.

We are launching a much more expanded home collection, we’re launching men’s as a separate site, and so we’re building out those teams as we speak. This is a much more complex business at scale than you would think. It’s a pretty easy business to enter, but it’s a difficult business at scale. We are moving tens of thousands of SKUs in and out all the time. We have new products every day; there is no core inventory here. So sale operations, warehouse operations, receiving, shipping, the tech platform, are all very complex.

This is a business where everybody comes at the same time. Shoppers all come to the door at about 11:55 and they race through to be the first people into the sale. Several hundred thousand people are trying to add to cart at the same time or trying to get through checkout. It needs very good operational minds, very good technical minds and great merchants who can both source and create sales.

You spent almost nine years with the Walt Disney Company where you served as president of ABC Entertainment, developing television shows such as Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy. What’s your favorite TV show right now?

Glee. It’s fantastic because it breaks all kinds of rules. It’s trying something very ambitious and those are always the shows I like best. Most of the time, they reach too far and something doesn’t work. This one happens to be awfully good.

Where do you look for inspiration?

I do a lot of reading, I look at a lot of magazines, I go to a lot of art galleries, and I visit a lot of stores. Also, I’ve got two daughters who are 24 and 20, and two step-daughters, and they’ve got tons of friends. Their friends are a huge resource for me. I see how they dress, I see what obsesses them, what shows they watch, what stores they walk into, what sites they access, and that’s hugely valuable.

You’ve been in the retail industry now for nearly a year. What have you learned that has surprised you?

I can’t tell you this completely surprised me, but it did confirm something for me: the customer is very smart. They are very savvy, they know what they like, and they’re generally right. You’re never going to be able to sell something—no matter how beautifully it’s presented—if it’s not pretty great, particularly in this economy.

I think that the people who are drawn to fashion at any price point tend to have looked at enough clothes over their lives that they are very savvy shoppers. They’re always going to be able to find the gem wherever it exists. We are well-served to watch them.

Jayne will be at the Shop.org Annual Summit on Tuesday, September 22 to sign copies of her book.

Today is the day GenBuY is published, and I know it’s been quite a project! Tell me about some of your favorite parts of the book.

I loved hearing and writing the young people’s stories about their relationship with brands and stores. It’s amazing how much what they buy – or long to buy – says about what they’re going through at the different stages of their lives. No matter what I’ve covered, I’ve always been intrigued the most by why people do what they do – whether it’s commit crimes, take driving risks or collect designer jeans.

Some of the teens’ obsessions with, umm, undergarments – one young lady had several dozen bras in every conceivable color and pattern – video games or sneakers were both mind boggling and revealing from a marketing standpoint. How to create or tap into these yearnings for various fashions or technology? We came up with some answers.

I knew we were on to something when I learned what was up with the various collections of “stuff’ – from Webkinz to flip flops – my 9-year-old was amassing in our two years of research and what was driving her fledgling passion for fashion. I’m also far more prepared for at least the shopping side of the teen and 20-something years now.

In researching for your book, what surprised you?

It was quite stunning what powerful consumers these young people are. The more we researched, the more convinced we became that this was truly the generation retailers and marketers need to target to thrive and even survive in the new economy. Their clout comes from their purchasing power (given that they have their own money, plus parents, grandparents and others shopping for them); their love of brands and shopping; and their influence over household buys.

It was also surprising how much the business relationship with them needs to mirror a personal one, including respect for their opinions and involving them in decisions. That’s what some of upstart websites such as Karmaloop and Threadless do and we think it’s going to have to be the way more established brands deal with their Gen Y customers – and employees.

It’s just so important for marketers to understand what’s makes Gen Y tick because that’s what makes them click — and buy!

I’ve heard that the inspiration behind your book came from a Shop.org conference session. True?

Indeed. A few months after I started on the retail beat in 2006, the women at Resource Interactive pitched me to do an article on findings they were going to share at that fall’s summit on Gen Y consumers. I agreed (That’s unusual right there! I probably do 1% of the stories I get pitched. See below.) I interviewed some of the teens in their study and found their digital and retail lives fascinating. When consumer psychologist and marketing professor Kit Yarrow and I decided to write a retail-related book the next year, it was the topic I most wanted to examine more deeply. She agreed it was the most compelling topic we could cover when it comes to retail.

As an outsider looking in on the industry, what do you think retail has in store for the next six months?

Well, I read the same reports everyone else does, but am probably more optimistic by nature than most. I do informal polls of USA TODAY’s 2,000-member Shopper Panel regularly and find many are starting to spend again – at least the ones who are still employed — but most say their buying habits have probably changed forever. Will luxury retail ever return to its pre-recession levels? That’s hard to imagine. But I know I have my own bad case of pent-up demand and many of the subjects of our book – to the extent they cut back at all – are dying to get back to some serious shopping. So I do think sales will start to improve.

What do you love about retail? What frustrates you?

The passion people in this industry have for their work makes retail a far more enjoyable beat than most I’ve covered, such as airlines or antitrust. I do rather love to shop so it’s fun – though expensive! – to do interviews at stores. And it’s very cool to be hearing about the latest trends in fashion and merchandising and to be able to call it “work.”

That said, it is frustrating – and perplexing – that many retail executives are so reticent about talking to the media, particularly when there is no shortage of “experts” out there ready to give their take on what retailers are doing right or wrong. I’m surprised and disappointed more don’t take the time to get to know reporters before they’ve got big news to pitch or bad news to try to spin. As it is with consumers, it helps to have a relationship with the media.

As a retail reporter for the last three years, you’ve undoubtedly spoken to a lot of retail executives. Can you tell me which interviews were the most enjoyable for you?

I loved hanging out with the loss prevention guys – at Bealls in Florida – and interviewing Target and Montgomery County police officials when I did a retail theft cover story a couple years ago. The thieves’ brazenness is horrifying, yet riveting. Unlike me, however, the LP folks aren’t exactly fascinated with why the bad guys (and women) do what they do. They just want them to stop stealing!

Farooq Kathwari of Ethan Allen has to have one of the most interesting life stories in retail and he’s a very nice person to boot. Johnny Morris of Bass Pro Shops (look for my profile on him coming this month!) has got to be the most down-to-earth CEO on the planet.

With the holiday season nearly upon us, I’m sure your email in-box will soon be overflowing with pitches from retailers and vendors. What advice do you have for companies who want to make a splash in the press this holiday season?

Keep an eye out for trends you may be a part of and pitch an “idea,” not just your company or product. For example, watch what your consumers are buying more of this year than last. Last year seemed to be the year of the practical and the comfort-giving gift. What will the theme be this year?

When you pitch your company, put it in a larger context. Newspapers, like most media, have shrinking staffs and reporters often don’t have time to connect the dots. Few of us have the time or space to report incremental developments at individual companies that don’t have a larger meaning or impact on consumers or business.

Do something that is truly different and newsworthy. Step back from your day-to-day job and think what your company might be doing that would be interesting to an outsider. Or ask new – and/or young! – employees if there’s anything going on that seems unique or newsworthy. I’m sure there will be stories about the retailer that stays open for the most days straight or puts up the first Christmas tree (which has no doubt already happened), but how about some truly new angles on the holidays this year?

And let’s try the reverse: what should companies who want to get their name in the paper never do?

Try to get reporters like me to promote their promotions. Sure, they might get lucky and a deal will get mentioned in a larger story. But PR pitches are far too often thinly-veiled (or not veiled at all) ad copy. I would have gone into advertising or marketing instead of journalism if I wanted to promote products!

It seems the Internet is playing a role in just about everything these days. Can you talk about how the web has changed the newspaper world, specifically USA Today?

Print reporters now have to think much more visually about their stories and consider things including interactive graphics and video. I even shoot my own video now. (Not very well, maybe, but it’s a start!) Our already-thin staffs feel even smaller now that many colleagues are blogging almost full-time. That can make it harder to cover the news, but helps bring new visitors to the site and the blogs give us all another forum to write in, which is exciting. And, of course, everything moves more quickly now with 24/7 news so it has sped up the news cycle. That doesn’t have as big of an impact on the retail beat, but it sure keeps the economic and political reporters on their toes.

How do you get your news, specifically retail news?

I read both SmartBriefs every day and love them. It saves a lot of time I might otherwise spend combing other print and online publications to keep up with trends. I scan the wires, read the major newspapers and get press releases on email from most major retailers or go to their websites when I’m working on a story.

You’ve made no secret about how much you love shopping. Where are some of your favorite places to shop, and what are your favorite things to buy?

I don’t want to name names, but I will confess to loving high-end department store outlets and off-price shopping. Some people say it’s too much work; I think the hunt is at least half the fun. I’m on a few of those discount designer email lists and get some great ideas that way but it’s just not the same for me as sorting through all the stuff in the store and feeling for myself whether that “buttery soft” cashmere really is. Clothes shopping is my favorite, but I’m going to have to return to furniture shopping soon. All these hours at home working on the book has reminded me it’s time to redo the living room.

If you were forced to take a three-month, paid sabbatical, what would you do?

I’m a passionate (not crazy!) cat lady. We foster homeless kittens and have a few of our own. So I’d take a tour of some spots out West I haven’t visited, do some writing and take my daughter to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah to volunteer. Lest I sound too do-gooderish, I’d also map out the closest spa and designer outlet mall and hit them as well.

Now that you’re no longer writing a book, how will you fill those extra hours?

Helping sell it, spending time with my somewhat-neglected family, and shopping — of course!

Connect with Jayne:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: jodonnell@usatoday.com or Jayne@genbuy.net

Matt McDowell/ Litle & Co.

As many of us are preparing for what appears to be the biggest Shop.org Summit to-date, I thought I would take a moment to share some tips to help online retailers get the most out of each and every transaction as they are gearing up for the holiday season.

With many Internet and Multichannel Retailers typically generating the majority of their annual revenue during the 7-weeks leading up to the holidays, preparing early can help to ensure the highest Average Order Values. In this and later articles, I will offer a few tips to help online retailers get ready for what could be the most difficult holiday season to-date due to the current economic conditions.

First Up: Risk Managment:

To maximize revenue, online retailers need to ensure that they reduce the number of fraudulent orders that pass through their system. Some tips for cutting down on risk include:

1. Validate the Cardholder’s Identify – By putting verification methods in place such as an Address Verification Service (AVS) and requesting the Card Verification Value Code (CVV) when the order process begins, merchants will be able to detect anomalies from the start. For those higher ticket items, consider putting a manual check in place to help weed out the good orders from the potential fraudulent ones.
2. Fraud Screening – Consider looking at an outside fraud screening vendor such as Accertify, Kount or Vindicia who can perform hundreds of scoring techniques on orders to give merchants a better look into each transaction and verify if it is fraudulent.
3. Take a Picture, or Be Invisible – Take the time to add advanced risk management techniques to your shipping process, especially for those higher ticket items. By taking electronic image (photo or video) of shipped orders, or marking the items with an invisible ink pen, you can reduce fraud.
4. Request a Signature – While requesting a signature costs more, the cost of receiving a chargeback for a “lost” item is far worse. Getting that physical signature at the time of delivery adds another proof point to combat the “I never received the items” dispute.

In my next post, I will discuss how to increase revenue and improve customer satisfaction by offering alternative payment methods to your customers. Stay tuned!

This says two things to me.  First, it reinforces the idea that online retail is resilient in the face of this recession.  Secondly, there is no question that, right now, online is the bright spot in retail.

Not only do we expect more people than ever before, but we will have more:

• Retail brands represented
• Retailers bringing teams
• Speakers
• Doctors (for 1-on-1 consulting visits)
• Keynotes
• C-level speakers
• Guided EXPO Hall Tours (with the addition of white glove tours)
• Big !deas Sessions

I’d like to believe that the Summit’s success is due to the impressive elements mentioned above  - in addition to the strong reputation of this event as the place to be for the digital retail community.  Of course, hotel rates of $79 per night, some of the lowest airfares we’ve seen recently and team pricing, also make a big difference.

Whether they’re looking for new ideas to make more money next week, the latest cutting edge ideas to fuel their next innovation or a year’s worth of e-commerce learning in one day at our boot camp, I’m excited to see so many members of the digital retail community make the choice to come to the Summit and push their business forward.

If you’re aren’t yet registered for the Summit, what are you waiting for?

This week, we’re “Talking With…” Terry Lundgren, who started his career as a trainee with Bullock’s department stores in 1975 and is now the Chairman, President and CEO of Macy’s, one of the most iconic retailers in the world. Here’s what Terry had to say about Macy’s plans for the holidays, what he loves about retail, and the importance of business leaders listening to young company talent.

You’ve been in the retail industry since 1975, when you started out as a trainee with Bullock’s, a division of Federated. We know the industry has changed dramatically, but what remains the same?

When I was a buyer at Bullock’s in Los Angeles, I knew every store manager, every department manager and most of the best sales associates. I even knew the guys in the distribution center because I needed to make sure that my merchandise received priority placement on the delivery trucks, especially when I was running an ad in the newspaper, which was often. I could stay very close to the customer with all of these points of contact. But my span of control was only 20 stores and they all were within a 90-minute drive or a one-hour flight.

With our My Macy’s initiative, we are recreating a version of what we had 30 years ago – reduced span of control for district merchants and district planners to be in stores constantly, listening to the voice of the customer. This close connection to our customer was, and always will be, the key to success for any retail organization.

NRF’s back-to-college survey found that department stores remain the shopping destination of choice for 18-24 year-olds. Has Macy’s made a conscious effort to reach out to young adults?

Absolutely. We work hard every day to bring a high level of fashion and excitement to our juniors and young men’s businesses. We’ve also stepped up our assortments for young professionals just entering the workforce through brands like BCBGeneration, as well as through more premium denim and other products that appeal to this younger generation. We just launched Rachel Rachel Roy exclusively at Macy’s, which is targeted to this young customer and it is selling extremely well. We are reaching out to this customer through social networking, including Facebook and Twitter, as well as local fashion and culinary events. Our national advertising, which features design celebrities such as Sean Combs and Jessica Simpson who have product in our stores, positions Macy’s as a preferred destination for younger shoppers.

Can you share any thoughts on the upcoming holiday season?

Especially in this tough economy, we inspire customers during the holidays and encourage them to “Believe” in the spirit of the season. Last year, we asked children to bring their letters to Santa to any Macy’s store and place them in our special letter boxes. More than 1 million of them did so, and we contributed $1 million to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, making us the largest single contributor to this fantastic organization that grants wishes to children with terminal illnesses. We will have a similar focus again this year.

The holidays are a very special time in our society, and it’s a time when Macy’s really shines – beginning with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Millions of people around the world also watch “Miracle on 34th Street” at Christmastime. And this year, we are going to launch a new animated movie based on a true story of a little girl named Virginia who seeks to discover if there really is a Santa Claus. Macy’s is a part of the fabric of the holiday season in America and we take our role very seriously – not only as a place to shop, but also as a place to experience a magical time of the year.

When you received the Gold Medal Award at NRF’s Annual Convention several years ago, you talked about the importance of cultivating young professionals within the Macy’s organization and said you meet with a select group of young talent on a regular basis. What have you learned from those meetings and have you made any changes because of them?

I learn a lot each time I meet with a group of associates who are early in their careers with Macy’s. I work hard to devote at least 30 minutes a week to them, and it is among the most rewarding things I do. These individuals are brimming with good ideas and insights we can apply to our business, and we do take action on them. For example, the development and rollout of the BCBGeneration product for young career women, as well as the Rachel Rachel Roy launch, were directly related to a meeting of my “Breakfast Club.” The group told me we had a gap in our assortment for this younger working customer, which included our own trainees and assistant buyers, and we moved very quickly to fill it.

Even in the midst of a challenging economy, Macy’s continues to grow. Was the decision to continue to open stores in this environment a difficult one?

I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. We planned these new stores a long time ago so they were already under construction when the great recession began to hurt the economy. Our focus today is to drive higher sales from existing locations. That’s the objective of our My Macy’s localization strategy. But we also are pursuing a few select opportunities to open new stores where Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s are under-represented. There are very few new shopping centers being built or opened today in the U.S. In the future, we have a number of potential avenues for growth, including overseas, and we are opening the first international Bloomingdale’s in Dubai in spring 2010. But right now, our energy is being focused on increasing comp store sales. We believe there is a lot of opportunity to take market share and to grow Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s in the locations where they already do business.

To whom do you look for inspiration?

Internally, I look to our own people. There is so much energy and enthusiasm within our company today, in spite of the economic environment. I truly believe that we have the best and the most talented team in the entire retail industry at both Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. We have always had a good team but today we have a spectacular team and they have a great deal of respect for one another. Our people have great ideas and a tremendous amount of passion for the business. I get excited and inspired every time I visit a store or talk to a group of our people.

Externally, I take whatever time I can to talk and listen to the senior leaders of other great American companies, especially those in consumer-driven industries. I am involved with a couple of outside organizations and have developed friendships with some of the most respected CEOs in the country. They always have a lot of great insights and I consider myself a student of business, so I just eat it up. I would like to think that they get a little something from my own insights and experiences at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s.

Tell me something that’s especially vivid from your first days at the company.

I was recruited to Bullock’s in Los Angeles as I was graduating college at the University of Arizona. I had several other job offers, but what struck me about Bullock’s was the unbelievably talented people I met in the interview process and potentially would be working with and for. That’s what attracted me to retailing and what has kept me in this industry.

Retailing thrives on smart, aggressive, fast-moving people who know how to spot and capitalize on opportunity. You are responsible for your own P&L statement early in your career as a buyer or a store manager. I am very proud of the fact that Macy’s, Inc. is known for having the very best training programs, which in turn has attracted the best people in retailing.

Give us a snapshot of something attendees might hear during your keynote next month at the Shop.org Annual Summit. [Shop.org retail members, remember to claim your company's free pass to the Summit by August 14.]

I’ll be talking about the power of multichannel retailing – the convergence of stores and online. It’s something we’re doing very well at Macy’s. Our multichannel strategy mirrors the strengths of Macy’s – fashion, brands and excitement. I plan to talk about the opportunity to capture more of your customer’s open-to-spend.

You’ve spent more than 30 years in retail. What do you like most about this industry?

The constant change. You can’t stand still in retailing. You must always be innovating and pushing the envelope. The competitive landscape is always changing. The customer is always changing and evolving, and so must we. I like being challenged in this way. I just love this business. It’s a privilege to come to work every day and do something I absolutely love to do, even in this very difficult economic environment. We get our performance review every day at the cash register. I love the challenge because I know our strategy and our organization structure is right and we have the talent to win.

How do you unwind?

I enjoy spending time with my family and my friends. I also have always played sports. I love the friendly competition. These days, I prefer golfing – it’s easier on my knees than basketball. I enjoy exercising in the early morning and I’m also an enthusiastic spectator when it comes to football, baseball, basketball, tennis and just about every other sport.

If you could take five people in the world to dinner – past or present – who would you take and why?

Funny you should ask. At Macy’s, we have a drive this fall that encourages people to “Come Together” over dinner to raise funds for local food pantries around the country. Our plan is to contribute at least 10 million meals for those in need. In this spirit, I plan to have dinner with a group of those well-known celebrities whose merchandise is sold at Macy’s – Jessica Simpson, Queen Latifah, Mariah Carey, Usher, Martha Stewart, Emeril Lagasse, Tommy Hilfiger and Donald Trump – so we can set the example in raising funds. They all will be appearing in the Macy’s television commercial this fall to promote “Come Together” and to help eradicate hunger in America.

Finish this sentence: “I can’t start my morning without…”

Some kind of exercise followed by a Grande Black Pike Place (Howard Schultz will know what that means) and reviewing the previous day’s sales report.

You’ve had an interesting career, first with Tower Records, then Borders, and now your current employer, ForeSee Results. What are the similarities between those roles? How about the differences?

There’s actually been some nice continuity between the three positions. I was at Tower for 20 years, working my way from store associate to buyer to store manager to some IT roles and then finally, with all my retail and technology experience, to building up TowerRecords.com when e-commerce came around.

When I finally left Tower to join Borders, I saw a lot of similarities in the businesses, for sure. Tower was primarily music and video, but also sold books. Borders was basically the opposite as far as focus, but the general business was pretty similar. Tower was private (with some public debt toward the end of my time there) and Borders was public, so I did notice more short-term pressures related to public reporting at Borders than I saw at Tower. Dress code was definitely different. At Tower, the dress code was basically “Don’t wear swimsuits.” Borders was a little more conservative than that.

ForeSee Results is a departure of sorts for me in that we’re a vendor. However, my role as Vice President of Retail Strategy calls for me to very much remain a retailer, which is great because that’s what I’ve been my entire adult (and even a little pre-adult) life. I don’t want to lose that exciting retail feeling.

Since I’ve been a ForeSee customer since 2002 at Tower and again during my time at Borders, I feel very comfortable with the ForeSee way, and I really love what the company does and stands for. In fact, during my search, I told myself that I had three objectives for my new position: (1) I had to believe in what the company does; (2) I wanted to learn something new and have plenty of great challenges; and (3) My “Miss America” clause: I wanted to be in a role where I could make the world a better place. I really believe that I’ve found all of those with ForeSee Results, and I’m really excited to be part of the team.

What were the first three things you did when starting your new job?

Well, besides filling out lots of HR paperwork, one thing I always try to do when starting a new job, whether it’s a new position with the same company or a new position at a new company, is write down my first impressions. It’s the only time I’ll have them, so I want to make a record of them because I find that over time I’ll start to hear and ingest all the reasons things are the way they are and I’ll forget how I felt about things that might not seem right to a new employee or a new customer.

I have this theory I call the Tree Stump Theory. It goes something like this…If we were to stick a big tree stump in the middle of one of our conference rooms, everyone who walked in would notice it and ask about it. Someone would give us a compelling reason why it was there, and then we would move on with our meeting. The next time we met in that room, we would notice the stump but not ask about it. Eventually, someone might stick a tablecloth on it, and we would start to adjust our seating to work around the stump. Before long, most people might not even remember why it was there to begin with. It would be hard to miss for anyone new to the room, though. So, it’s nice to reference my first impressions list from time to time to help me see things freshly again, even when they’ve become ingrained.

And by the way, there are both positive and negative tree stumps. I’ve found many times that there are great things at companies and on sites that have been undervalued over time, and it’s just as easy to lose sight of those as it is the negative things.

I also definitely like to spend time meeting everyone on the team and really listening to their perspectives and sharing some of my stories from the world of retail. Last and certainly not least, I’ve been talking to customers to get their perspectives and really try to understand their needs and expectations.

What are you most proud of from your tenure at Borders?

I’m really proud that we brought Borders.com back home to Borders. I love the site and some of its innovations, including the Magic Shelf and some of the excellent video content. I am unbelievably proud of the team of people who worked day and night to bring the site back. It was a tough, tough project that had to be done in a very short period of time. People sacrificed major portions of their lives and time with family for the cause, and I could never thank them all enough for what they did.

I’m also really proud of Borders Rewards. Before building Borders.com, I first led the team that created and launched Borders Rewards. It has since become one of the largest loyalty programs in specialty retail, and it far exceeded any of our early expectations. It was very cool to work on that effort.

As someone who recently transitioned into a new position with a new company, what advice do you have for online retail employees who may be in between jobs?

I think the first thing I would say is stay positive. I’ve been impressed with how many companies seem to be hiring e-commerce roles, even in this economy. While it may not seem like it at times, this can be a great opportunity.

I suggest communicating with everyone you know to let them know your status and what you’re looking to do. My first week after leaving Borders, I spent a LOT of time sending emails and making phone calls. I went through my contact lists, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. and tried to find everyone I could think of that might be connected to someone who knew something about a job. I talked to former co-workers, vendors, friends, neighbors, friends of friends, people at the gym, etc.

All of that initial outreach definitely generated opportunities, and I pursued them all with vigor. Even though there were some positions that didn’t seem right, I still chased them down. I figured if nothing else, the effort would help me refine my story and my interviewing skills — and it did. I got very good at telling my story and hitting all the right points.

I also “interviewed” myself. I wrote down all of the interview questions I could think of, and then I took some time to write down my answers to each. As I heard new questions during my process, I added them to the list. I regularly studied this sheet before each interview as part of my preparation.

Of course, I also did lots of research on each company and each interviewer and created a set of questions to ask during the interview. In addition to questions, I found it was helpful to come up with some ideas for how to improve the business. I found that even if interviewers weren’t ready to take on each of my ideas, they really appreciated the thought that went into them.

You’ve been in this business, in varying roles, for a long time. For someone who is just getting started in retail or e-commerce, what advice would you give them?

I think it’s really important to listen and learn as much as possible. Read blogs (the Shop.org blog, grokdotcom.com and Six Pixels of Separation are really good ones), subscribe to newsletters like SmartBrief and Internet Retailer, and more than anything talk to customers. If you’re working for a multichannel retailer, find time to work in some physical stores. Multichannel or not, find time to take some customer service calls.

I’m also a big fan of business books, so I would recommend reading lots of them. You may not believe everything you read, but it will help expand your thinking, and I think that’s always a good thing. One I read this year that really got me thinking was “Fooled By Randomness” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and one of my all-time favorites is “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis.

Optimists, myself included, are fond of saying that retailers who make it through this recession will be stronger for it. Do you agree with that? Can you think of anything specifically in e-commerce that will have benefited in the long-term from the current economy?

I definitely believe businesses that make it through this storm will be stronger for it. The recession has caused us all to find those elements of our businesses that are most critical to our success and relentlessly focus on those elements, not on the peripherals. Costs are more in line with sales today, and as revenues start to return the bottom line should benefit. The key will be to maintain that focus even when better revenues tempt us to take our eyes off the ball.

I think e-commerce is benefiting from the realization at many retailers that the website is about much more than the buy button. Online marketing vehicles are more efficient, for the most part, than their traditional counterparts, and retailers are starting to see that those vehicles can drive traffic to brands overall, online and offline, and the web plays a central role in both acquisition and retention of valuable customers.

You recently blogged about a quote you read, that “defending the status quo is what kills companies.” The e-commerce crowd is generally a pretty forward-thinking bunch, but how can smart retailers ensure that progress is not hindered because they’ve “never done it that way”?

Ha! Thanks for reading. I think everyone is susceptible to defending the status quo, especially when things are going well. E-commerce is generally going well, even in these times, and its future is bright. But good times are exactly when it’s important to start thinking about changing for the future. The world is constantly changing, and in e-commerce it’s changing faster than anywhere else, so we have to be even more ready to change directions. The barrier to entry at a global level in e-commerce is obviously significantly lower than in the physical world, so innovative new business models have a much better chance at success than in the past. In the blog post, I talked about how quickly Zappos went from an idea to a billion-dollar company on the strength of a new model. Amazon and iTunes are other obvious examples. As e-commerce continues to mature, we will become more susceptible to resting on our laurels, at least to some degree. We cannot rest.

You mentioned the Shop.org blog as a resource for people looking to learn more about e-commerce. Tell me about your history with Shop.org.

I’ve been involved with Shop.org since my days with TowerRecords.com. I find the organization overall to be incredibly valuable. The content at the shows is always top-notch, and I’ve learned so much by attending. Even more than learning, I’m always inspired by what I see and hear. Sometimes, I’ll see a presentation that wouldn’t seem relevant to my business, but I’ll hear something that will spark an idea. I also really love the round tables. I’ve hosted lots of them over the years, and I’ve never been disappointed in the conversations. I like that they provide a comfortable but somewhat structured point for conversation of particular topics. Of course, the absolute best conversations take place at the conference bars. I’ve had some doozies in there!

I also really appreciate Shop.org’s advocacy for the industry. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with the Policy Advisory Group, and I’ve been impressed with how the Shop.org team is working on behalf of its members to deal with some thorny issues in Congress.

What’s the best part about working in retail?

To me, bar none, the best part about working in retail is finding ways to help customers. I always loved making customers happy when I was working in stores, and I’ve never lost that feeling. I think retail is really a service industry, and when we do things that truly delight customers we actually make the world a better place.

Connect to Kevin:

• Twitter
• Blog
• LinkedIn
• Email: Kevin.Ertell@ForeSeeResults.com

We discussed this finding at the June Internet Retailer show with executives from a number of commerce platforms that primarily work with mid market retailers. The reaction was mixed.

Some validated the finding and others mentioned that they had seen an increased interest in international e-commerce capabilities in RFPs. A few admitted they hadn’t even looked at order-related data from their e-commerce clients that are shipping internationally.

One curious executive pulled together a data set that showed country-by-country destinations for all their platform clients’ international orders. Both the dollar volume of international orders ─ a seven-figure dollar total in a single month ─ and the broad global distribution was a surprise.

Where Are International e-Commerce Orders Shipped?

The following charts break down the distribution of orders, first by region and then by the Top 10 country destinations.

Top destinations for international e-commerce orders (by regions).

Top 10 destinations for international e-commerce orders - by country

Some observations:

· By only including orders shipped to a non-U.S. address, this data set doesn’t take into account international orders that were forwarded from U.S. shipping addresses maintained/serviced by international e-commerce solution providers and freight forwarders. This is a common way international customers receive goods from U.S. e-commerce sites.

· Although this is just a one-month snapshot, orders shipped by mid-sized retailers closely mirror the global distribution of all e-commerce orders (although Australian and French consumers seem to really enjoy shopping from the mid-market retail site and pure plays).

· Although e-commerce activity in emerging APAC markets is heating up, the UK alone generates 40% more e-commerce revenue than Japan, China and South Korea combined.

· When UK revenues stand apart from Western Europe, Canada (27%) accounts for almost as much revenue as the Western European countries combined.

· Australia is becoming an increasingly significant e-commerce market. This data point supports the conversations we’re having with senior international e-commerce executives.

· Japan generates slightly more e-commerce revenue than China although China’s growth is 3 to 4X that of Japan

This is one month of e-commerce orders totaling a seven figure aggregate dollar volume and therefore is a very small slice of the global e-commerce pie.

What does this data say to you?  What else are you seeing when you look at your international order volume?

Are you looking?

Thanks,

The J.C. Williams Group

P.S. We’re wrapping up the executive interview component of the study this month, so if you’re a senior retail executive in charge of, or involved with, international e-commerce and would like to join us, email jokamura@jcwg.com and kent.allen@researchtrust.com.

]]> http://blog.shop.org/2009/07/10/a-snapshot-of-global-ecommerce-demand/feed/ 0 http://blog.shop.org/2009/07/10/q2-quarterly-online-sales-flash-survey-results/ http://blog.shop.org/2009/07/10/q2-quarterly-online-sales-flash-survey-results/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:17:54 +0000 Fiona Swerdlow, Head of Research, Shop.org http://blog.shop.org/?p=1741 2009 is proving to be one of those contrary years, especially in retail — a mix of stops and starts, alternating signs of recovery and stagnation, perplexing (if not outright maddening) metrics.  As we have said before, we have no crystal ball here at Shop.org – but the collective insight of retailers in our most recent Shop.org/Forrester Quarterly Online Sales Flash Survey give us some directional clues at very least. 

59 retailers participated in the Q2 Online Sales Flash Survey, conducted from July 1 to 7, 2009.  Respondents represented a mix of business type (variations on multichannel, branded manufacturers, pure plays) and annual Web business size.  As usual, we asked simply, “How did your gross online sales (top line) for the period April 1, 2009 through June 30, 2009 perform relative to the same period last year (April 1 through June 30, 2008)?” 

Shop.org Members can download the full data and PowerPoint summary results from the Web site; following are a few highlights:   

• Fully 59% of retailers surveyed reported that their gross online sales had indeed grown for the quarter compared to the same quarter in 2008.  9% reported flat sales (in this economy, nothing to sneeze at), and one third (32%) reported sales decreases. 
• Average YOY quarterly growth across all retailers surveyed was 11.8%
• Close to two thirds of large retailers ($100+ million in annual Web sales) reported revenue increases for Q2 2009 vs. Q2 2008.  Ditto for mid-sized retailers (defined as between $10 million and $100 million in annual Web sales).  Smaller retailers (under $10 million) struggled somewhat more, but half of those surveyed in this segment did in fact realize sales growth. 

Thanks to all retailers who participated in this quarterly (and entirely anonymous) survey!  We look forward to your participation in our next quarterly results survey the first week of October, shortly after the Shop.org Annual Summit.  And, as always, we welcome your comments and thoughts.