shopping

Close to 4 million British shoppers went online to purchase goods on Christmas Day, spending a total of  $154 million (102 million pounds) according to a new report from the ecommerce retailing body IMRG.

The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) has launched a campaign asking consumers to shop locally at brick-and-mortar stores instead of shopping online. Their reason: online retailers don’t collect sales taxes and don’t support local jobs and community organizations.

For the first time, the Internet has surpassed brick-and-mortar stores as the preferred way for multi-channel shoppers to buy holiday gifts, according to a new survey by the e-tailing group.Nearly half (49%) of those surveyed said they plan on doing their gift buying online while 44 percent intend to do so in-store.Reasons for shopping online include saving time (88%), locating hard-to-find products (84%), greater selection (83%) and avoiding crowds at the mall (83%). Saving money was still an important factor for 80 percent.

Microsoft is looking to boost its online shopping search market share. The company has announced an acquisition of Greenfield Online, owners of popular shopping search site Ciao.com. This is the largest purchase Microsoft has made in a while. The company appears to be playing around with the money it had left from the Yahoo deal falling through. They dropped 486 million big ones on this one.

Speculation as to why Google's paid clicks have flattened in January has led to further speculation that a recession has caused consumers to do less search-initiated shopping. Hitwise's Bill Tancer has information that suggests otherwise.(It occurs to me also that investors have been spoiled by Google's constant growth, as even when Google grows there is disappointment that there wasn't more growth. And flat returns now might as well be declines. Regardless, I suppose market corrections are inevitable. It just sucks if you bought in at $747 per share.)

A new report form Nielsen Online examines the reasons shoppers turn to the Internet during the holiday season.

Now there is almost nothing left that you can’t buy entirely online. Autonation is the first to offer this service for buying a car completely over the internet. They are piloting a program that lets customers buy their car online in the Atlanta market with 14 dealerships.