This article below from the today's NYT echoes a conversation I had this week with a major tableware brand. The head of the company said that he can see a day when the traveling home goods salesperson will not travel. Instead, the person will do his or her sales presentations over the phone and web. Samples will be shipped via UPS or FedEx. Otherwise, sales reps have to drive to and from meetings, and this gas money may eat up 25% of their commission. Oddly, few sales reps have seen this fate, and so they do have not embraced the web yet. They should be, or they may have to drive out to find a new job.
July 19, 2008 To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM To go shopping these days, more Americans are trading in their car keys for a keyboard.
Online shopping is gaining at a time when simply filling up a gas tank to head to the mall can seem like a spending spree.
A number of retailers — including Gap, Victoria’s Secret and J. C. Penney — are experiencing double-digit sales growth at their shopping Web sites, creating a surprising bright spot during an otherwise gloomy time for sales in brick-and-mortar stores.
One popular strategy for getting shoppers’ attention is offering free shipping, in contrast to many other businesses, like airlines, that are adding surcharges and other fees to offset their higher costs.
The Web sites of Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Bon-Ton Stores, Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters,Target and Kmart were all offering a deal on shipping this week.
“With gas being such an issue, we know that mall traffic is down more than off-mall traffic,” said Mike Boylson, chief marketing officer for J. C. Penney, which had an 8.7 percent increase in Internet sales in the first quarter of this year.
That is in contrast to a 7.4 percent decrease in sales at stores open at least a year, known as same-store sales and a measure of retail health. “We see more people turning to online because it’s much more efficient in terms of time and money,” Mr. Boylson said.