Posted 10/23/09 at 05:40:50 PM by Bart Salisbury

Brick & mortar stores may be struggling, but the Internet is still printing money for some online retailers. Count Amazon among those who won big in the 3rd quarter of 2009, with a whoppoing 62 percent jump in profits. Amazon chalked-up $5.45 billion in sales during the quarter, an increase of 28 percent from the third quarter in 2008, with a net income of $199 million. Investors took the news well, bumping up the price of Amazon’s shares some 15 percent to $170.07 in after-hours trading.

“Kindle has become the #1 bestselling item by both unit sales and dollars – not just in our electronics store but across all product categories on Amazon.com. It’s also the most wished for and the most gifted. We are grateful for and energized by this customer response.” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.

In response to new competition in the e-book marketplace, Amazon has reduced the price of its new 3G Kindle to $259, and has announced the the free application “Kindle for PC” to widen the reach of its e-book offerings.

Read More

Posted 12/30/08 at 05:17:38 PM by Andy Salisbury

Given that the economy is down in the dumps, it would be expected that online retailers are treating all of their customers with all the respect that they possibly can… right? Wrong. According to an annual report from Forsee Results more than one-third of the 40 online venues surveyed in a report on retail satisfaction finished with lower scores than they did at this very same time last year.

While many of the retailers’ scores remained the same, a meager one-quarter of them saw an improvement. At the top of the list is Washington’s own Amazon.com, with an 84 percent satisfaction rate, a two percent improvement over last year. All the way at the bottom is Neiman Marcus with a dismal 69 percent. Other notables are Newegg.com’s 78 percent, BestBuy.com’s 73 percent and Dell.com’s 73 percent.

While these percentiles might not give off the impression of poor performance, bear in mind the millions upon millions of people doing business with these companies online during the holiday season. Having a good 30 percent of the people that do business with you walk away unhappy is a very large number indeed.

Read More