Analyst Keith Benjamin figures online mall CUC NetMarket's model -- where customers pay an up-front fee to receive bigger discounts on all subsequent book purchases -- might prove more profitable.
Put together an online mall and a credit system such as Zynga, and you could wind up with a retail powerhouse running its own payment system, leaving banks to supply the payment utility but not much else.
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Chase has bought a stake in ShopNow.com, an online shopping mall.
Internet entrepreneur runs Japan's leading online shopping mall Rakuten.
Vipshop has never been profitable and faces competition from other online retailers like Taobao Mall, 360Buy and Dangdang, which adds to the hurdles the company must overcome to win investors.
The only way you are going to know about that sale is to sign up for its mailing list at the mall office or online.
To avoid high gas prices, people might choose to shop online rather than drive to the mall.
And, instead of being linked to a single online store, like Amazon, it uses a "mall" concept, designed to allow users to choose from many different online stores, though only two are available now.
With so much shopping being done online, the entire notion of Shopping Mall was forced to evolve.
At home in China, Mr. Ma is trying to stay ahead of the game as competition rises for the first time against his massive online shopping sites, Taobao Marketplace and Taobao Mall, which rival eBay.com in terms of transaction value.
Road-shows, media interactions, mall promotions with F1 cars, and online and advertising-driven promotions have done a lot to arouse the curiosity of the uninitiated fan.
But plenty of people who could find better deals faster online are still getting in their cars and heading to the mall.
Shopping can be done online, instead of buzzing off to the supermarket or the mall: one van delivery can do the work of many individual shoppers in their cars.
Given how easy it is for a customer to walk across the mall to your competitor, or price shop your products online, your competitive advantage is largely derived from how well you develop a relationship based on trust.
Mall lines remain long and the website estimates a 1-2 week wait before shipping for online orders.
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"We felt that working with Taobao Mall offered the best approach to reaching out to more consumers because it is so clearly the most influential online business-to-consumer sales channel, " said Christophe Bezu, chief e-commerce officer for Adidas, in an email.
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