Articles by Michael Mahoney

Women have made a higher percentage of online purchases than men for two quarters running,according to a survey released Thursday by Greenfield Online. The report indicates that sales to women outnumbered sales to men by 2 percent in the third quarter of 2000.

Tower Records and MP3.com announced a deal Wednesday that will provide customers with immediate online streaming access to music they purchase from TowerRecords.com, and eventually Tower Records brick-and-mortar retail stores. The agreement to extend MP3's "Instant Listening" service to Tower was made possible by recent court decisions clearing th...

In sharp contrast to the consumer resistance that online car dealers are experiencing in the U.S., General Motors (GM) said Tuesday it hassold over 8,000 Chevrolet Celta cars in Brazil via the Web since mid-September According to GM, more than 80 percentof its expected 25,000 Brazilian Celta sales will take place onlineover the next several months....

To prevent the potential loss of over 5.2 million customers duringthe holiday season, Kmart-backed discount e-tailer BlueLight.com said Monday it is buying select assets from its defunct free Internet access provider, Spinway.com As part of the acquisition, BlueLightwill hire about 30 Spinway employees to operate the free ISP as an independent Blue...

A report released Thursday by the European Union shows that Internet penetration has increased 55 percent in Europe over a six-month period According to the report, an assessment of the progress of the eEurope initative, the number of European households with Internet access rose from 18 percent in March to 28 percent in October....

Interactive digital TV may be the Asia-Pacific region's key to catching up with the rest of the e-commerce world, according to a report released Tuesday by Andersen Consulting. According to the study, the Asia-Pacific region boasts the highest rates of TV penetration in the world, along with a substantial and growing broadband subscriber base. Cab...

Despite an overall decrease in summer retail sales, e-commerce sales flourished from July to September, according to a report released Monday by the Census Bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce The third quarter witnessed a 15.3 percent online sales gain over the previous quarter, while total retail sales fell 0.4 percent....

Recent acquisitions produced some shuffling in Media Metrix's Top 50 most visited Web sites for October, released Friday Infospace Impressions and CNET Networks Digital took the biggest leaps in the October rankings, with visitor increases over the previous month of 145 percent and 62 percent, respectively. CNET rose nine spots to a No. 9 ranking o...

Garden.com (Nasdaq: GDEN) became the latest addition to the ongoing dot-com casualty list Wednesday when the company announced a phased shutdown of its e-tail operations. The Austin, Texas-based firm plans to sell its consumer business assets, including its product inventory, URLs, online gardening tools, content andphoto library, as well asbegin ...

Despite the ongoing dot-com shakeout and the common perception that Latin America is not ready for e-commerce, a new report released by Greenfield Online reveals that Mexican Internet users are buying goods on the Web in increasing numbers According to the data, 36 percent of the survey's respondents reported making an online purchase in the previo...

E-commerce will transform international trade into a US$1.4 trillion online export market by 2004, according to a new report released Monday by Forrester Research. The report also predicts that 23 percent of all U.S. exports will be conducted online in four years Not all countries will share equally in the wealth generated by e-commerce, however. W...

Fearing that it may be falling behind the U.S. and Europe in Internet use and sophistication, Japan took the first major step last week toward becoming an e-commerce nation with the passage of the IT Basic Bill by the Lower House of the Diet (Japan's parliamentary body) The new law calls for an "electronic government" through the creation of a broa...

Microsoft Corp. announced Monday the release of two new products intended to help e-commerce suppliers participate in business-to-business (B2B) e-marketplaces Both new offerings, bCentral Commerce Manager and Supplier Accelerator, are part of Microsoft's E-Business Acceleration program.

Despite the gloom and doom of the ongoing dot-com shakeout, a new report from eMarketer predicts that U.S. online retail sales will grow from a projected $37 billion (US$) in 2000 to $125.6 billion over the next four years In addition, e-commerce revenues in 2000 are expected to almost double from the $19.4 billion recorded in 1999. According to th...

A new privacy program, announced Wednesday by independent privacy watchdog TRUSTe, will make it easier for U.S. e-commerce companies to comply with European Union privacy laws The TRUSTe announcement came the same day that a safe harbor agreement reached several months ago between the U.S. and the 15-nation European Union took effect. That agreemen...

The typical Internet user might not be as young as one might think, according to a report released Monday by Gartner Group The average American who logs on is 41 years old with an average income of $65,000 (US$), married with 2.81 children and uses a PC at work. Gartner found that men and women are represented equally on the Web.

Despite an expected 300 percent spending increase on information technology security over the next four years, bad decision-making will leave U.S. companies almost as vulnerable to security breaches as they are today, according to a new report issued by Forrester Research The report, titled "Sizing the Security Market," estimates that firms will in...

A U.S. congressional appropriations bill amendment targeting online identity theft has angered President Bill Clinton, who threatened Thursday to veto the bill unless the amendment's controversial language is withdrawn The amendment, proposed by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire), would make it illegal to sell or display a Social Security number wit...

Shares of Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) jumped $5.13 (US$) to $34.69 by mid-day Wednesday after the e-commerce bellwether reported a Q3 operating loss of $68 million, or 25 cents per share, outpacing projections by 8 cents The company also reported a net sales increase of 79 percent over the same quarter in 1999.

E-commerce customer spending fell 12.8 percent from August to September, according to a new report published by U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray and Harris Interactive The research revealed an online sales drop-off from $120 (US$) per customer (median) in August 2000 to $100 per customer in September, during which consumers conducted an estimated $3.09 b...