Online Shoppers Say They'll Buy from Small and Large E-Businesses Alike

As the holiday shopping season begins in earnest, consumers say they're just as willing to buy from small online retailers as they are from large, national e-commerce providers.

In addition to this key finding, a new national survey of 2,500 consumers discovered extremely high levels of consumer participation in - and satisfaction with - shopping on the Internet, despite continuing concerns for security and privacy.

According to the survey, sponsored by Hostway Corp., a global leader in Web hosting and managed services, more than three-fourths of consumers who have shopped the Web sites of both large and small companies said company size is not a factor in having their online shopping needs satisfied. Only 15 percent of respondents expressed a strong preference for dealing with large companies online, opening the door for small- to medium-sized businesses to get in the e-commerce game.

"These survey results provide very encouraging news: The Internet 'Gold Rush' is far from over for small businesses," said John Lee, Hostway's vice president of marketing. "The Wal-Marts of the world may be hurting sales for Main Street retailers, but consumers are telling us size doesn't matter on the Information Highway.

"Our message to small retailers is this," Lee continued, "You clearly have an opportunity to succeed in e-commerce. Consumers are able to find you online. They're willing to buy from you. But it still takes a lot of work, and you should get help from the experts in building and promoting a successful e-commerce Web site."

Overall, nearly nine of ten survey respondents reported buying products online, and of that group, 94 percent said they are satisfied (30 percent) or very satisfied (64 percent) with their overall experience. Participating consumers ranked the following attributes as being the most important factors in shopping online:

- Assurance of security (97 percent)

- Promise of privacy (96 percent)

- Prices (95 percent)

- Web site ease of use (94 percent)

- Availability of desired products and services (94 percent)

Market research firm TNS conducted the survey for Hostway between November 10 and 13, questioning 2,500 adult consumers nationwide about their online shopping experiences.

Lauria L.

Amazon has begun taking pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S III, a handset that will become available in Europe at the end of this month. The offering has caused some head-scratching: If this were the newest iPhone, the rush to get one might be understandable. However, the unlocked Galaxy S III smartphone will cost an eye-popping $799.99, and it won't be fully compatible with any U.S. network.

Google has officially closed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. This could transform the search engine giant from a software player to a maker of hardware: smartphones, tablet PCs and even set-top boxes. More importantly for Google is gaining control of Motorola's patent portfolio, which could help it fend off lawsuits from rivals such as Apple and Microsoft.

Apple filed a motion for an injunction against a familiar patent sparring opponent Friday, requesting that Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 be banned from sales in the U.S. The company made a similar bid last year as part of the ongoing and many-faceted legal battle between Apple and Samsung.

The European Union's antitrust ax is about to fall on Google, but the company can still avoid the worst repercussions. That is the essence of the message from EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia. After a year-and-a-half investigation into Google's activities in the market, there are four areas of concern that need to be rectified, he said.

The x86 data center revolution has been a tale of industry standard upward mobility pressuring and displacing traditional systems. In essence, continually evolving x86-based systems and complementary technologies -- particularly virtualization, memory and I/O -- have provided hardware vendors the means to develop systems capable of challenging and beating traditional enterprise server platforms.

Personalization sits at the very heart of marketing performance improvement in B2B as well as in B2C companies. The latter camp has made enormous strides in recent years in being able to present customers and prospects with relevant content, offers, recommendations, and other types of messages via online channels, including the company website, in an automated and systematic fashion.

No one could accuse Facebook of having beginner's luck on Wall Street. The company's initial public offering on Friday was delayed by two hours due to a glitch in Nasdaq's trading system, prompting many traders to cancel orders because they were not sure of the stock's price. The day, in general, was arguably a disappointment for the social media giant, with its per share price ending only slightly above the $38 starting price.

Five major cable service providers in the United States are teaming up to allow their high-speed Internet customers access each other's metro WiFi networks. The five are Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable. The agreement will create a chain of more than 50,000 hotspots.

Yahoo will sell half its stake in Chinese e-commerce heavyweight Alibaba back to the company for about $7.1 billion, setting in motion a deal that will send cash toward Yahoo shareholders. The deal will take place in multiple stages. First, Alibaba will purchase about 20 percent of Yahoo's stake in the company.

Mediafly is a startup company that delivers cloud-based applications for content management and distribution on mobile devices for Fortune 500 companies. Through the Ariba Network, Mediafly gained insight and control over its cash flow and found new means of managing capital and in aiding its ability to support ongoing operations, as well as to drive future growth.

Silverpop has been on the vanguard of old-school digital marketing providers -- that is, email marketing firms -- embracing social media. The company has released a slew of products designed to integrate the two disciplines. Given that history, it is difficult to imagine a subsector or market constituency that it missed in its earlier product rollouts, but apparently Silverpop has found one, and it has set out to rectify the omission.

Over the next few years, the growth in online retail sales in markets such as Western Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America is expected to outpace U.S. growth. Given this increase in cross-border e-commerce, many retailers are rushing to reach new markets. However, the unique circumstances of international shipping call for unique systems and process capabilities.

For all the anticipation leading up to Facebook's initial public offering, opinions about how it performed are decidedly mixed. Clearly, though, the market didn't think the stock, which started at $38 per unit, was a grand bargain: Facebook ended trading on Friday just a few cents over its opening price.

As Facebook launched its IPO on Friday, it was hit with yet another class action lawsuit over its practice of tracking of users even after they had logged out of its website. The amended consolidated class action complaint was filed by Stewarts Law in a San Jose, Calif., federal court.

Samsung overtook Nokia to become the world's top cellular phone maker earlier this year, shipping more than 92 million handsets in the first quarter. The company's Galaxy S II smartphone had stellar sales, reaching 20 million. The third time might be more than the charm -- it could be big on an intergalactic scale, with some 9 million pre-orders reportedly placed for the upcoming Galaxy S III, which will debut in Europe on May 29.

Wearing his trademark hoodie, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg virtually rang Nasdaq's opening bell from Silicon Valley this morning to kick off the start of what will be a very interesting Friday. This is, of course, Facebook IPO day -- the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated initial public offering of the social media giant.

HP is planning significant layoffs with the aim of increasing efficiency and focusing on new products, according to a recent report citing an anonymous source. The company could lay off more than 30,000 workers, or nearly 10 percent of the company's total workforce of 324,000. The large-scale cuts are reportedly part of CEO Meg Whitman's effort to rebuild the company.

This spring has seen a raft of software company events and announcements, and they've been good meetings full of real news and important new developments. It is as if these companies bided their time during the worst of the recession, building new product, thinking about the future and how customers will use their technologies.

In the U.S. market, the percentage of broadband households owning and connecting at least one product besides PCs to the Internet has increased 45 percent between 2010 and 2011. Today, approximately 40 percent of all U.S. broadband households own at least one Internet-connected device, with game consoles accounting for 75 percent of these products.

Twitter has made an important overture to privacy advocates: It is giving users the ability to opt out of being tracked on the service by enabling the Do Not Track feature in the Firefox browser. Ed Felten, chief technology officer for the Federal Trade Commission, broke the news at an industry event Thursday morning in New York. The company later confirmed it in a message on Twitter.

The image-based social networking site Pinterest has raised $100 million in a financing round, and this brings the value of the company to around $1.5 billion, an unnamed source told All Things D. Rakuten, one of Japan's biggest online retail operators, led the round of financing. It was joined by a group of investors including venture-capital firms FirstMark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz.

Verizon will reveal a new shared data policy this summer and end its unlimited data option, according to CFO Fran Shammo. Currently, the company allows customers who had a $30-per-month unlimited data plan before Verizon's switch to tiered plans last July to keep their unlimited plans when they upgrade their phones to LTE devices. That option will soon be eliminated.

Google is extensively updating its search function with the rollout of a new Knowledge Graph. The heart of the Knowledge Graph is a database Google has compiled, via its own research and through its acquisition of MetaWeb Technologies, of 500 million people, places, things and points of history.

There's always a danger of reading analysis by others that matches your own personal experience and then simply using it to build up the foundation of what you know and believe. But hey, danger can spike adrenaline, and I like adrenaline, so check this out: Information technology research firm Gartner released a report about its worldwide tablet sales projections for 2012.

Customer service is a crucial part of the customer experience. That seems immediately obvious. And customer experience is the big buzzword right now, so companies are going bonkers revamping their customer service operations. Right? Would that it were so. Almost paradoxically, many businesses are still stuck in the mode of tweaking with utterly defective customer service processes.