All About Retailing

Posted by Paul Christ September 15, 2009

Labels: Customer Behavior, Distribution and Product Movement, External Forces, Internet Marketing, Legal Issue in Marketing, Retailing

Here are few recent stories focusing on retailers.

Newegg is the First Retailer to Get the Gold for Web Accessibility for the Blind (Internet Retailer) - This is definitely an issue to watch. More retail websites are expected to follow Newegg's lead and alter their website design to make it more accessible to the blind and others who find these sites difficult to access. Expect the National Federation of the Blind and other special interest groups to push this issue to many more retailers.

The NFB is also working with Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc.`s iTunes site and Target Corp., whose legal settlement with the NFB earlier this year helped spur interest in retail web site accessibility

What type of spending must a company undertake to get its website to be more accessible to the blind?

Natural Search Still Doesn't Come Naturally (Internet Retailer) - Search engine marketing is a very big deal but many big name retailers were very slow to adopt the web as a distribution channel and they are still having a hard time catching up when it comes to rankings in search engine results. As this story notes, the issue here is with placement in natural search results and not the location of ads found on search engines.

Natural search results reflect Google`s assessment of a site`s content, and retailers wanting to move up in natural search must build or purchase content related to their products. "Creating content takes work," Becker says.

What are the key factors search engines like Google will consider when it decides which websites will rank the highest on a search result?

Blockbuster to Close as Many as 960 Stores (MSNBC) - The leader in video rental retailing is struggling as consumers find other options for satisfying their video fix such as rentals by mail (Netflix), through the cable box, over the Internet and through vending machines. Match this with a down economy and store closings are inevitable.

By the middle of next year, Blockbuster hopes to have 10,000 kiosks scattered around the country. It had just 500 kiosks at the end of August.

Does the Blockbuster brand name carry enough weight to be successful in other methods of distribution such as vending?

Favorite 50 (Stores Magazine) - This is a good story that reports on research in which consumers were asked to name their favorite online retailers. The top 5 or 10 are pretty obvious but others may be a bit of a surprise.

Loyalty is taking a back seat to price, and shoppers are becoming agnostic about retail channels. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the first-time entry of Craigslist.org.

What are the biggest surprises on this list?