November 22, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team

The holiday season is just around the corner and Group buying startup Groupon is leaping into the spirit, not just by offering special deals, but by creating its own holiday, Grouponicus.

Described as a “brand-new, centuries-old wintertime holiday that lets you skip the stale gift cards and give your loved ones fun and exciting experiences in their city—at 50% off,” Grouponicus is another zany promotional tactic that prides itself on smart, tongue and cheek writing.

How does Grouponicus set itself apart from Groupon? For one, it’s a completely separate site and email news letter. The site points out special holiday deals that Groupon patrons can purchase for that special someone.

The Grouponicus site also differs in structure. Instead of offering one deal per day that lasts only 24 hours, Grouponicus offers three to four deals at a time that will be available for three to five days.

No holiday would be complete without some form of symbology. Christmas has Santa, Thanksgiving moderates the turkey population, Hanukkah has a dradle made out of clay, and Grouponicus has Groupo The Bargain Bird. He is “the dapper, snake-tailed Grouponicus holiday mascot that kids love! On each night of Grouponicus, Groupo uses his nimble snake-tail to unlock your attic windows so that he may leave neatly stacked Groupons inside the ovens of his true believers –those who live by his Doctrine of Completion.”

One may ask what the Doctrine of Completion is.  Well it’s the belief system by which all Grouponicus followers adhere to and swear to uphold.  The Doctrine is said to be found  ”in the heart of every singing child, the faces of every elderly couple baking snow pies, and in the concrete-filled vault 26 miles beneath the Library of Congress, where the original copy is still faintly glowing.”

Grouponicus will offer a total of 650 deals throughout the holiday season, which begins during the Autumn Solstice on Nov. 22 and wraps up during on Dec. 26.

November 17, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team

In the Chinese Zodiac, 2011 will be the year of the rabbit, but according to many experts 2011 is going to be the year of social commerce.

According to industry analyst Ovum, more and more retailers will be turning to e-commerce. They believe retailers will be hoping to harness social commerce across multiple platforms, including smartphones and even TVs for a more profitable year.

Retailers and advertisers have begun to recognize the possibilities and power of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Interacting on an international level with an audience of  hundreds of millions of people  seemed a far too intimidating medium to get behind at first. Now Ovum estimates that this fear will change as 2011 rolls around and firms move to embrace the march of progress.

Says Christine Bardwell, Ovum analyst:

“Contrary to the current waves of cynicism in the UK retail sector, 2011 will be the year when social commerce will really take off.”

Bardwell explains that leading businesses in the UK are cautious to adopt e-commerce due to a concern of safe online shopping and the small number of actual online retail success stories.  ”However,” she said, “it offers good sales potential in 2011 and will be the big story in retail technology. It definitely should not be disregarded as a fad.” Still, there is something to be said for ecommerce “across the pond.”

Over the next fiscal year social commerce is expected to grow exponentially and leave behind its “faddish” stigma as well.

“Retailers will start to take a serious stance on social shopping in 2011 and we will see more and more products and services available for us to buy when we log on to catch up with our friends,” says Bardwell.

M-commerce and television shopping will also be expecting a significant increase in traffic. Bardwell explains that television shopping shows signs of opening up for retailers. ” We will start to see the option to click through consumers’ favourite soap operas or music videos to make a purchase.”

With multichannel shopping known to increase retail sales as much as a third, it’s important for retailers to keep up with the new trends of social commerce.

“Integrating all these channels is the key to driving repeat business, which is crucial as the days of high growth on the high street are over and the signs are that the online market is starting to mature and should not be relied on for long-term growth,” said Bardwell.

November 16, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team

Everybody is Kung-Fu fighting now with the launch of urban clothing line Drunknmunky’s first webstore. Based out of the UK, Drunknmunky gets its name from an ancient Kung-Fu fighting style practiced by Shaolin monks. Mastering the Drunknmunky technique shows control and strength of the mind and body. By marrying this ideology with the underground music scene, the Drunknmunky lifestyle and culture have emerged into a line of urban streetwear products for men and women 16-25 years old. From hoodies, hats, tees, and sneakers, ranging from anywhere between £20-£60 Drunknmunky wear can make anyone walk just a little taller. Think East meets West but on the urban streets of London, the brand simply oozes a fresh sense of cool.

Originally limited to only retail distribution, Drunknmunky has now evolved into an online brand.

“We recognize that our customer base is choosing to shop more online. This launch sees us increasing our online business, digital presence and international reach, a key objective for us this year” says Dave Shanks, managing director at Drunknmunky.

The ecommerce site, designed and powered by creative digitial marketing agency Strange, has properly captured the Drunknmunky culture in the store’s digital interface. Strange takes the style and ideologies of the brand and fully mimics integrates it into the store’s navigation and design. Other features include a news feed, competitions, and a social sharing function to continue brand growth. Drunknmunky can accredit much of the webstore’s early success to Strange’s prelaunch campaign. The campaign heavily involved building a solid customer database and brand awareness. By the time the site went live, they already had a strong online presence. Now with a live ecommerce store, Strange’s focus will include a paid search campaign to drive site visitors as well as a social media strategy to maximize sales just in time for this year’s holiday shopping.

November 16, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team

eBay wants to make your kids cry… tears of joy that is. The holidays are not dead thanks to eBay’s social media campaign Love to Give which aims to bring emotion back into the act of giving. The website began a campy six-week web series entitled ‘Unwrap Attack,’ the first of which was launched on Oct. 29, featuring The Daily Show’s comedian correspondent Samantha Bee as the star gift enthusiast. The webisode shows Bee watching humorous clips of children freaking out as they open their Christmas presents while she is readying her own gifts for the same reaction.

The theme of each series encourages eBay users to find the perfect gift for their child or loved one in order to invoke the Christmas Freakout. The Christmas Freakout was originally popularized by a YouTube video of two kids, Rachel and Brandon Kuzma, unwrapping their Nintendo 64 on Christmas in 1998. The video became a huge Internet sensation. The clip shows the two kids screaming hysterically, celebrating wildly, and even shedding a tear upon unwrapping the gaming system. If they were going wild over a Nintendo 64, imagine the reaction when kids and even adults are opening up the Kinect this year (ever see an adult scream or shed a tear for a new toy? It’s the best.).  BMW has bought the rights to the video for an undisclosed amount (somewhere near $50,000) and has featured it in its broadcasts. Now, eBay has followed with an estimated $15-$18 million budget for their Love to Give campaign which is divided between online ads, social media applications, and the ‘Unwrap Attack’ web series. eBay users can also submit their own videos of their gift recipients having a Christmas Freakout on lovetogive.ebay.com.

With such a large budget, eBay is putting a heavy effort to connect with their target audience (the 40 year old shopping enthusiast) with action to drive traffic back to the self-proclaimed “world’s largest marketplace for the holidays.” The campaign has already generated a positive response as it taps into the driving force of social shopping. Christopher Payne, vice president for the North American operations of eBay, based in San Jose, California, says social shoppers “like to hunt for an item, like to talk about it and like to share [...] social channels have become dominant.” Between applications on mobile devices and Facebook and a webisode on YouTube, eBay has fully covered their ground on social media. The company wants their customers to know eBay is the place to find the gift that will cause any person to shake, shriek, and celebrate uncontrollably. Ready those video cameras, this may be the one time of the year where its okay to laugh at crying children.

November 11, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team

Hide your kids, hide your wife, and why not,  hide your husbands too. Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian have teamed up with MasterCard to be the faces of a new prepaid credit card that targets the teen and parents’ of teens demographics. The Kardashian card is designed to help parents monitor their children’s spending, control their balances, and teach kids about money management.

“Teens do not spend their money as their parents think they do [...] and drugs are a huge problem in this country. I give my son a small amount of cash and track his spending on his card,” says a rep for Mobile Resource, who helped MasterCard launch the Kardashian card on November 10.

Signing up with the prepaid card automatically opens a free Mobile Money account connecting the card to any mobile device and allows users to conveniently transfer funds between accounts by cell phone. Users also have the option to receive mobile alerts on all purchases. Does this mean the Kardashian Sisters are now the faces of financial responsibility?

The girls are best known for their hit reality series Keeping Up With the Kardashians on the E! network and not for their financial savvy. Ironically, Kim Kardashian is so notorious for her extravagant spending that her own family had to stage an intervention to get her to curb her shopaholic ways. She admits that she spends the most out of all the Kardashians, with recent purchase including a $2,500 pair of Christian Louboutin shoes and a $30,000 Birkin bag. Given how vastly her idea of spending varies from the average American’s, this Kardashian may not be the financial role model that teens need.

Kim Kardashian’ s other endorsements are a bit of a dichotomy as well, ranging from weight loss products with Quick Slim, a workout DVD, and Reebok appearances,  to lending her face to Carl’s Jr., Famous Cupcakes, and Sugar Factory’s Couture Lollipops. Her variety of past endorsements may not all fit together perfectly, but her latest venture may prove to be a smart one.

Prepaid credit cards are projected to gain popularity over the next few years. They have perks that credit cards don’t, like the inability of acquiring debt and a lack of overdrafts, while keeping strengths like federal insurance and the ability to receive salary direct deposits. They are so useful that by 2014, nearly 12 million people are expected to have a prepaid credit card of some kind.

November 9, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team

The idea that different groups approach ecommerce differently is nothing new. In the brick-and-mortar marketplaces of the world, retailers have been making use of demographic information for years to target their promotions and advertising to desired groups in order to get maximum business and return on investment.

Art Technology Group (ATG) is counting on ecommerce sites being able to apply the demographic data in their latest survey to accomplish their goals.

Mcommerce: More than 40% of younger consumers (age 18 – 34) use their mobile phones to research or browse for product information. This is keeping in line with information covered here regarding upcoming holiday shopping – apparently shoppers are relying more and more on their phones to make their shopping experiences that much better. Services like Groupon even offer smartphone apps that allow users to access their Groupon coupons directly on their phone instead of printing them out.

Social Shopping: 29% of the same demographic (18 – 34) responded that they had located product information through a social network of some kind. 37% of those shoppers said that social network feedback was “important.” This could help to explain the rise of social shopping sites like JoeShopping.com, ShopSocially, and Lockerz. About 50% of users age 18-34 will “like” a business on Facebook or another social network and encourage others to patronize it.

E-mail Messages: Nearly half of female respondents indicated that e-mail had helped them learn about new products. Only 37% of men agreed. 47% of consumers over the age of 55 were able to uncover the same marketing information contained in e-mail literature through other product research means. The youngest subset of users only showed a 41% occurrence of the same.

With the ever-increasing variety of methods that ecommerce outlets have at their disposals to reach, educate, and retain new customers, combining those techniques with demographic data will make all the difference in mounting a successful marketing campaign this coming holiday season and beyond.

November 9, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team

Hey Bieber fans, wait no more, the countdown begins, December 1st is the release date for Justin Bieber dolls everywhere! *Cue tears of happiness*

Here’s a crash course, on Bieber 101. The international teenster’s been breaking hearts all over with his magical voice and boyish charm that will make any mother blush. Known for pop hits like “One Less Lonely Girl,” and “Baby,” Bieber has turned into a major brand from clothing, bedding, a newly released autobiography (by the way, Bieber is 16 years old), and now he has a doll.

Feeling flushed in the face yet? Weak in the knees? That my friend, might just be ‘Bieber Fever.’ What exactly is ‘Bieber Fever?’ Symptoms of ‘Bieber Fever’ include a deep reddening in the face followed by an uncontrollable high pitch scream upon hearing his pop hits, an affinity for feathered bowl cuts, and an unashamed urge to kiss his poster before bedtime. It’s pretty easy to catch, there’s no known cure or vaccine, and it spreads like the Swine Flu. Some don’t even know they have the ‘Fever’ until it’s too late and in a blink of an eye, they are waiting in line for a Bieber Doll.

Bieber dolls come in two models, a singing version for $25.99 and a basic model for $17.99. The singing version offers a 30 second clip of one of his pop songs and is outfitted in the fashions from that corresponding music video. Here’s where it gets really wild, as the basic model will not disappoint, fans can choose from Bieber in Red Carpet Style, Street Style, or Awards Style. Various accessories and clothes come with the doll in true Bieber likeness as well as a mini magazine.

There will be a limited number of Justin Bieber dolls available for purchase and projected to be a hot ticket item for the holidays. Amazon.com is already offering preorders for the Justin Bieber dolls which will end Dec. 1 when they hit retail shelves everywhere. There will be one less lonely girl come this December when fans can sleep soundly snuggled next to their very own Justin Bieber doll.

Neiman Marcus, no stranger to online marketing, is turning to social shopping in order get customers excited for the holiday shopping season.  The High-end department store has developed the Present Perfect Challenge that has contestants competing for a chance to win a $2,500 Neiman Marcus gift card.

The Present Perfect Challenge, which began Nov. 2, will consist of two rounds in which participants will put together a personal gift guide of at least 10 gifts from a selected collection of Neiman Marcus fashions and accessories.  From there they choose their Gift Guide recipient from the following list: Mom, Dad, The Kids, Host/Hostess, For Him, For Her, The Person Who Has Everything, or Other.  Next, the participant must explain why they chose those particular gifts for that particular person.

Each week the program will populate the most popular gift items and display the Top Ten. By the end of round 1 (Nov. 30), a total of 40 finalists will be selected to move onto round 2 for the chance to win the $2,500 gift card.

Round 2 will begin on or around December 6th, 2010 and ends on or around December 27th, 2010.  Here, five finalists will be selected from each of the eight gift recipient categories.  There where will be three prize winners at the end of round 2, in which the second runner up will receive a $500 gift card, the first runner will receive a $1,000 gift card, and the grand prize winner will receive the $2,500.

Neiman Marcus partnered up with social media marketing firm Brickfish to develop the Present Perfect Challenge.  The competition is stiff  with almost 1,500 contestants in the running for the $2,500, but there is still plenty of time to step in and share one’s expertise.