Mele’s Musings

To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click

Last week, I was bragging that I found gas for under $4.20 a gallon. Who EVER thought that gas over $4.00 would be considered a bargain?

Picture: ChuckThomas.com

Article excerpt: To go shopping these days, more Americans are trading in their car keys for a keyboard. Online shopping is gaining at a time when simply filling up a gas tank to head to the mall can seem like a spending spree. A number of retailers — including Gap, Victoria’s Secret and J. C. Penney — are experiencing double-digit sales growth at their shopping Web sites, creating a surprising bright spot during an otherwise gloomy time for sales in brick-and-mortar stores. One popular strategy for getting shoppers’ attention is offering free shipping, in contrast to many other businesses, like airlines, that are adding surcharges and other fees to offset their higher costs. The Web sites of Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Bon-Ton Stores, Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, Target and Kmart were all offering a deal on shipping this week. “With gas being such an issue, we know that mall traffic is down more than off-mall traffic,” said Mike Boylson, chief marketing officer for J. C. Penney, which had an 8.7 percent increase in Internet sales in the first quarter of this year.
The rest: NYTimes.com

Musing: For all those click and mortar retailers who have been neglecting their websites, the downturn in the economy will be a rude wake-up call. Like the car companies who were literally asleep at the wheel during the SUV craze, retailers that treated their websites as second fiddle to brick and mortar stores are finding themselves 2 years behind in R&D. The good news is that people will come anyway, and this is a good time to start experimenting with different ways of merchandising, personalizing, and communicating. With more focus and more traffic, etail sites can find large and willing audiences who will put up with different offerings, surveys, tests, and requests for feedback in exchange for added value. Now is really the time upgrade online stores, and do it quickly.