Spotlight Features

Whatever the future holds for online prescription drug sales, Drugstore.com is standing by its predictions of profitability by the year 2004, even after another quarter of reported losses. In fact, president and chief executive officer Kal Raman told the E-Commerce Times this week that his compan...

Catalogs have proven to be a catalyst for online retail success. According to industry analysts, retailers that already had catalog operations in place have effectively adapted their offerings -- including known brands, sheer size and developed distribution networks -- to consistent success onlin...

Consumers are a demanding bunch. And as technology gets exponentially better and cheaper over time, online shoppers are wanting better and cheaper access to what they are looking for. Forrester Research senior analyst Paul Sonderegger told the E-Commerce Times that users "are downright hostile to...

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...

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 ...

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.

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. For exam...

Twenty-two-year-old chief executives are hard to find at e-commerce trade shows these days. Now, launching a career at the apex of a corporation is about as rare as a dot-com going public. For strong-willed and well-trained graduates, however, there are still plenty of opportunities to break in...

Internet brokerage E*Trade, online realty Homestore.com and software company i2 were among targets that came to mind when analysts were asked to pick their top e-commerce buyout candidates. With stock prices at bargain-basement levels, these and other dot-coms like them could make good partners f...

To say Amazon.com has been busy striking partnerships lately would be an understatement. In barely more than a month, Amazon announced deals with Circuit City, Target, Expedia and Hotwire.com. Those pacts came on the heels of earlier deals with Borders and Toys "R" Us. Yet over the same period, A...

Despite promises to the contrary and a number of state laws making it unlawful to send unsolicited, commercial e-mail, the California Attorney General and the California Department of Consumer Affairs (DOCA), including its newly formed Office of Privacy Protection, appear to have done little to f...

Although many companies in the technology and e-commerce spaces have undertaken mass employee layoffs in order to cut costs and prop up sagging earnings, industry analysts say that a nagging question remains. Are these organizations paying too high a price for their pursuit of financial relief? ...

While investor speculation and skyrocketing stock prices dominated during the first half of 2000, falling stock prices and nervous investors have long since become the order of the day, causing many firms to slash their workforce in an effort to steady their financial ships and improve investor ...

While consumers tread lightly when it comes to conducting international e-commerce, businesses have begun to use the Web to erase borders and streamline their global operations. Smart companies are using the Internet to shorten the time it takes to get materials from suppliers, to communicate w...

At mid-year, in terms of dollars and number of deals made, venture capital funding for U.S. investments was less than half of what it was in 2000, according to VentureWire, which tracks private equity investment. Even so, the high-tech desert has more than one venture capital oasis. In this art...