Business

Despite the benefits of business-to-business online purchasing, corporate purchasing agents say that they plan to make only 20 percent of their purchases online in the next year, according to a study released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix. Sixty percent of the purchasing agents surveyed for th...

Despite the benefits of business-to-business online purchasing, corporate purchasing agents say that they plan to make only 20 percent of their purchases online in the next year, according to a study released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix. Sixty percent of the purchasing agents surveyed for th...

Despite the benefits of business-to-business online purchasing, corporate purchasing agents say that they plan to make only 20 percent of their purchases online in the next year, according to a study released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix. Sixty percent of the purchasing agents surveyed for th...

There's only one directive that seems to hold true across the e-commerce landscape these days: to survive, literally, at all costs. While some e-tailers are desperately seeking new revenue sources and better gross margins to stave off hostile investors, others are completely reinventing them...

Internet powerhouse Amazon and brick-and-mortar giant Wal-Mart are reportedly discussing a strategic alliance. Amazon founder and chief executive officer Jeff Bezos and Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott are "hammering out details of an agreement that could be announced within six weeks," London's Sunday T...

Internet book vendor Bibliofind.com reportedly said Monday that a four-month long security breach on its computer servers has exposed customer credit card information. The e-tailer, which provides an electronic catalog of millions of used and rare books for sale by independent booksellers around t...

Internet powerhouse Yahoo! announced late Thursday that its board of directors has adopted a stockholder rights plan to discourage a hostile takeover attempt. Yahoo! said the plan is "designed to deter coercive takeover tactics, including the accumulation of shares in the open market or through ...

Bankrupt e-tailer eToys has sold its BabyCenter unit to Johnson & Johnson for US$10 million in cash, the health care products giant announced Friday. The sale price constitutes a fraction of what eToys paid for BabyCenter two years ago. The asset sale comes after eToys and Goldman Sachs tr...

Dot-com chief executive officers are departing their companies at a rate of almost one per day, according to a report released Thursday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of job placement firm, told the E-Commerce Times that no matter "what euphemism...

As the dot-com shakeout nears the one-year mark, many companies might have a bad case of the E-Commerce Blues. Some analysts say that overspending and over-expansion, at the expense of monitoring cash flow and focusing on profitability, have doomed many e-tailers before they really ever began. Can...

Alternative payment methods, such as prepaid value cards and Web currency, are being used online, but they'll never dethrone the king of the dot-com world: the credit card. According to Yankee Group analyst Christine Loeber alternative payment methods are "not gathering much steam." The more e...

Georgia and Texas are among the U.S. states grappling with the issue of Internet alcohol sales, after a federal law went into effect last month giving states more control over alcoholic shipments to consumers in their states. Girding up on one side of the debate are those who believe that allow...

After rejecting three takeover attempts in recent months, Fashionmall.com said Wednesday it had closed on three acquisitions of its own. New York City-based Fashionmall said it purchased the assets of Beautyjungle.com, MXGonline.com and Itsybits.com. All three sites are in the beauty and fashio...

Royal Ahold, the parent company of online grocer Peapod, has infused the struggling e-tailer with an additional US$30 million in financing, Peapod announced Wednesday. The new funding increases Ahold's original $20 million credit facility with Peapod to $50 million, Peapod said, leaving the e-ta...

Analysts disagree on whether Tuesday's downbeat economic news, including a reported drop in consumer confidence to its lowest level in nearly five years, is likely to drag down e-commerce spending levels. Forrester analyst Christopher Kelley told the E-Commerce Times not only that "consumers are de...