e-commerce

This is a well-thought-out move: Low-cost air carrier Virgin America, which has attempted to court passengers with a tech-savvy offering since its 2007 launch, announced today its initial service from San Francisco and Los Angeles to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. To drum up online chatter, it partnered with Chicago's company of the moment--Groupon.

Groupon users can purchase $77 worth of Virgin America credit for $7 on the massive group-buying site, with the caveat that it can only be used on the airline's new Chicago routes. Given the amount of positive buzz for a brand that can … Read more

Few companies have changed the e-commerce world in the recent past as much as Groupon, a local-deals broker that has gotten the nation hooked on half-price massages, discounted restaurant bills, and packages offering rock-climbing and yoga combos (though, ideally, not at the same time). It's earned rave reviews for customer service, thanks in part to its hiring of underemployed comedians as copywriters and service reps.

Yet Groupon has taken a beating in the past few weeks--not in terms of traffic, and not from the rise of any of its several dozen smaller competitors--but just because of a few bonehead … Read more

U.S. online retail spending reached a record-breaking $43.4 billion in the fourth quarter, fueled by strong holiday spending, Comscore reports.

Spending in the fourth quarter was up 11 percent over a year ago, representing the fifth consecutive quarter of positive annual growth and the second quarter of double-digit growth rates in the past year.

In 2010, holiday spending online was bolstered by the first-ever billion-dollar day on record, and others surpassing $900 million. The strong growth rates are a huge swing from two years ago, when fourth-quarter sales fell by 3 percent.

The bulk of online sales occur … Read more

High activity during last month's holiday season, as well as continued strong growth from PayPal, meant that e-commerce giant eBay had some rather nice numbers to report in its 2010 fourth-quarter earnings on today. Revenue was up 10 percent year-over-year if you don't count Skype, which eBay spun off late in 2009, and profits were up 24 percent. Analysts were expecting a profit of 47 cents a share; eBay posted 52 cents.

The company reported "strong holiday shopping momentum" as the year drew to a close, propelled in part by its focus on mobile commerce and … Read more

A small company called Kindle Lending Club plans to launch a beta site today or tomorrow that will let it profit from Amazon's e-book ecosystem.

The five-person start-up has a simple business model. First, connect people who are willing to lend the electronic books to those who want to borrow them. Second, when the borrowers discover that they didn't finish with Amazon's 14-day lending window, offer a link to buy the e-book and share a portion of the resulting revenue through Amazon's affiliate program.

It might not be enough to acquire Facebook, but site founder Catherine … Read more

The late author Stieg Larsson can posthumously claim another victory: His "Millennium Trilogy" of thrillers topped both the print and e-book categories on Amazon this year. "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" was Amazon's best-selling Kindle e-book, and "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest" was the online marketplace's top seller in printed books, according to a year-end list released Thursday.

Those two books also topped those categories when it came to the most appearances on Amazon users' wish lists, but perhaps because of their gory subject matter were not the … Read more

A financial news and research outlet called VCExperts posted an article today claiming that on December 17, daily-deals broker Groupon "filed a certificate to authorize a $950 million Series G round of preferred stock." The exact amount that the company raised in the monster funding round should be available next week (which means it could be quite a bit less), the report continued, adding that the company's valuation is likely $6.4 billion.

The dollar amount sounds like something out of Dr. Evil's machinations in the "Austin Powers" spoof film series, but Groupon isn'… Read more

The amount of money spent shopping online during the holiday season increased this year compared with last, say two recent reports, another sign of the Internet's continuing permeation of American life.

SpendingPulse, a report from MasterCard, pegged the year-over-year rise at 15.4 percent. The report, released this week and covering the period from October 31 to December 24, looks at sales in the MasterCard payment network and combines those figures with survey-derived estimates of non-credit-card purchases.

According to the report, apparel sales led the field among e-commerce categories, a sign, perhaps, that shoppers are becoming more comfortable with … Read more

The Internet finally seems to be as popular as TV, according to a study released yesterday by Forrester.

Based on a survey, the research firm's report found that people in the U.S. on average spend around 13 hours a week online, the same amount of time they spend watching TV.

As usual, the results vary by age. People ages 18 to 30 have been spending more time on the Internet than watching TV for awhile. But this marks the first Forrester study in which folks in the 32 to 44 group also are online more than they are … Read more