Articles by Michael Mahoney

It is common knowledge that heavy, bulk items with high shipping costs (for example, pet food) are at a major disadvantage when it comes to online selling. The items that have sold best online (such as books and music) can be sold in large quantities and at low prices, and can be described to consumers with simple precision and accuracy. But these...

As industry observers scan the horizon for signs of an economic recovery in 2002, several dot-coms are boosting hopes for an e-commerce renaissance by turning a profit. Each company's strategy is different; for example, Expedia has focused on branching out beyond selling airline tickets, while 1-800 Contacts chose its product because it is ideal for mail order -- and thus, for the Web.

Seamless integration between online and offline channels is the Holy Grail ofbrick-and-click retailing. But as with any worthy quest, a map is neededto point the way toward the elusive prize. With that in mind, here are seven steps to help a multichannel business click on allcylinders....

Over the past couple of years, Super Bowl advertising by dot-coms has gone the way of the dinosaurs. This year, a few fossils remain, but the scene is still a far cry from the dot-com Super Bowl party thrown in 2000, when as many as 20 e-businesses bought more than US$2 million worth of ad time for the big event According to Fox Sports spokesman Lo...

If the saying is true that one person's junk is another's gold, then there should be plenty of wealth to go around for e-businesses these days. After all, the junkyard of bad e-commerce ideas has been piling up steadily for several years. Unless today's e-commerce companies can transform the failures of companies like Furniture.com or E-stamp.com...

In the early days of online commerce, e-tailers knew exactly to whom they were selling. Internet shoppers were predominantly male, middle-to-upper income and techno-savvy. So it was relatively easy for online retailers to target their product selections and marketing messages, because there was virtually no need for market segmentation. At this p...

Few segments of e-commerce have been more over-hyped, and more disappointing, than mobile commerce According to Jupiter Media Metrix, the U.S. has the largest base of mobile phone users of any country in the world, 110 million. Yet less than 0.1 percent of those users bought goods using wireless data services in 2000, and merely 7 percent of wirele...

With approximately 90 percent of online shopping transactions stilloccurring via credit card, any attempts by the e-commerce industry tocapitalize on new electronic payment innovations might seem fruitless. Yet, seemingly every week, a new payment method arrives on the online shopping scene....

'Tis the season for online shopping forecasts, and with each passing day, itseems like there are new holiday predictions to digest like so much turkey and cranberry sauce. How can e-tailers rely on these numbers when every research firm has arrived ata different figure for the projected sales?...

Recently, the E-Commerce Times explored the e-business opportunities in which teenagers, despite limitations on their purchasing power, should be an e-tail target, rather than an e-tail afterthought Without doubt, marketing online to adolescents poses economic, legal and moral risks. However, with those hazards taken into account, the Internet's te...

Getting teenagers to buy online should be a snap, right? After all, they have the time, the Web know-how, the disposable income, and a seemingly inexhaustible hunger to consume new products and services Instead, many companies are beginning to throw in the towel when it comes to getting adolescents to make a purchase online. The reasons are many, b...

It's no secret that mis-targeted, misspent brand advertising dollars have gotten e-tailers into plenty of financial hot water over the past few years However, there is at least one target audience for whom a large, consistent dose of brand marketing makes perfect sense. In fact, when it comes to the next generation of online shoppers, brand marketi...

The latest release of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0 should have been the perfect opportunity for e-tailers to show consumers they are serious about online privacy. Instead, it may turn out to be just the opposite Embedded in IE 6.0 is the first incarnation of a new privacy platform standard established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), ca...

Most business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce technologies focus on automating the physical aspects of a company's fulfillment and order functions. However, the future success of B2B may lie in applications that hone in on the heart and soul of the Internet itself: the flow of information Instead of technology that helps companies get a product from A...

How many times have you stopped just short of completing an online order because you were not sure of a product's size, color or overall look? If you're like most online consumers, the answer is probably: many, many times. And e-tailers know it....

U.S. e-commerce sales in the second quarter of 2001 dropped 1.8 percent from the previous quarter, the Census Bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce announced Thursday. Online sales for Q2, not adjusted for seasonal, holiday or trading-day differences, were US$7.458 billion -- 0.9 percent of total retail sales. In contrast, overall retail sale...

Another Net appliance has made an early exit -- this time, Sony's eVilla Net Entertainment Center, which lasted just two months. According to Sony, the eVilla online service is scheduled to end on September 13th. eVilla customers were mailed a letter from Sony during the week of August 27th, detailing a plan in which Sony said it will buy back eV...

eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) said Wednesday that it reached a deal with Columbia TriStar Television Distribution (CTTD), a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment (NYSE: SNE), to produce a daily syndicated television show focusing on "the stories behind the millions of items traded daily on eBay and other venues." Slated for fall 2002, the series will be p...

The latest dot-com job cut numbers released Tuesday by Challenger, Gray, & Christmas (CGC) paint a rather mixed picture of the Internet economy. On the one hand, dot-com layoffs in August fell 44 percent from July, to reach a 12-month low of 4,899. On the other, the number of dot-com firms that permanently closed up shop leaped 133 percent in Aug...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has settled a case it filed against spammers who collected consumers' personal information, including credit card information, by sending unsolicited commercial e-mails that told people they had to supply the data or lose access to the Internet. The settlement with Robert Stout, doing business as Global Int...