Business

Despite the slowdown in the global economy, online retailers worldwide are expected to rack up US$25.3 billion in sales this holiday season -- marking a 39 percent spike over last year's figures -- according to a study released Monday by GartnerG2. The research firm also predicts that the fallout...

Surging apparel sales will help fuel a 43 percent rise in online spending this holiday season, Web measurement firm Nielsen//NetRatings said Monday. Nielsen//NetRatings predicted that US$10 billion will be spent online during the last eight weeks of the year. Clothing will top all other sectors w...

In the glory days of e-tailing, many Internet pure plays spent lavishly on customer acquisition and loyalty programs, but corporate naivete and consumer greed proved a crippling combination for those online businesses. As a result, e-tailers were forced to rethink their promotion strategies, esp...

Online auctioneer eBay topped analyst estimates in the third quarter ended September 30th, and raised estimates for the current quarter as well. "In these extraordinary times, we continue to be impressed by the strength and resiliency of our user community," said eBay president and chief executiv...

Outpost.com (Nasdaq: COOL), one of the first big-name pure-play e-tailers, continues to lose money but says it expects to have enough cash to hang on until its proposed merger with Fry's Electronics can be consummated. Outpost's most recent quarterly report, filed with the Securities and Exchange...

The eToys Web site is back, in time for the holidays. The online toy seller, which went out of business and had its assets acquired last spring by toy retailer KB Holdings, is operating as a unit of KB's subsidiary KBKids.com. Morningstar.com analyst David Kathman told the E-Commerce Times that t...

Travelocity reported its largest quarterly profit to date on Wednesday -- US$4.9 million -- despite a decline in revenue attributed to flying fears after the September 11th attacks. Travelocity's revenue of $78.5 million in the third quarter was 4.6 percent below the $82.3 million the company ...

Career planning in e-commerce is not for the weak-spirited. A struggling technology sector and an economy teetering on recession have severely limited the opportunities for middle- and upper-level managers. "With the way the market changes so quickly these days, it is very difficult to speculate ...

Forrester Research said Tuesday it will stick by its prediction that U.S. consumers will spend US$11 billion online this holiday season. The estimate, which calls for a 10 percent increase over 2000 online holiday spending, was revisited, Forrester said, in the wake of the September 11th terroris...

Media giant AOL Time Warner on Wednesday reported third-quarter pro forma earnings and revenue that topped expectations, though the company posted a net loss for the period ended September 30th as advertising revenue declined.

High-tech and e-business companies have rebounded nicely from the sales slowdown that followed the September 11th attacks on the United States, and the bigger, more diversified e-tailers should be able to meet third-quarter earnings targets, analysts say.

Commerce One said late Monday it will cut about 1,300 of its 2,800 jobs as it spins off some operations. The Pleasanton, California-based company, which makes e-commerce software and operates online purchasing exchanges, said that about 700 of the layoffs will be job eliminations primarily among ...

If you wanted to triple your money in three years, are there technology investments that could help you do it? Not likely, say most analysts and portfolio managers. For returns like that, "go to Vegas," U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Jon Ekoniak told the E-Commerce Times.

While news sites dominated Internet use during September, one e-commerce company used a pop-up ad campaign to propel itself into the top tier of most-visited sites for the first time, according to data released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix. The pop-up ads propelled ABPharmacy.com to 33rd in Jup...

Consumers are becoming more interested in paying their bills online, though the number of people who actually do so remains low, said a report released Monday by the Yankee Group. "Considering the growth we've seen in the past, it's not a bad growth rate," Yankee director Paul Hughes told the E-C...