Internet Retailer

"Amazon won't pin its business strategy’s success on its own branded hardware products," says Harry Wang, director of mobile research at Parks Associates, a technology research and consulting firm. "But owning its own hardware serves several strategic advantages: It enhances branding visibility, retains more loyal customers, better integrates Amazon services and shopping apps with hardware, and gains some leverage with digital content providers, merchants and partners. Overall, ...read more

More consumers today are, however, employing showrooming in its most traditional sense, melding mobile commerce with shopping in stores, a report from consumer analytics research firm Parks Associates finds. The report, entitled “Mobile Commerce, Keys to Mass Adoption” is based on multiple consumer surveys of heads of households with Internet access. It finds among smartphone users buying a consumer electronics product in 2013, roughly one-half used a mobile commerce app while i ...read more

The Sears service enables consumers to download movies the same day they go on sale as DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, says Sonic Solutions, the owner of the RoxioNow platform. This gives the Sears service nearly a month’s lead on Netflix Inc., No. 14 in The Top 500 Guide and the market leader for digital entertainment streaming. Netflix must wait 28 days from a film’s release on DVD before it can make content available, according to its agreements with such movie studios as Universal S ...read more