Retailers have been grousing for years about the disappearance of consumer dollars to the online environment. And the proliferation of smartphones has made things that much more difficult as consumers in the stores looking at products can immediately look to see if they can get better prices online. Amazon.com is taking it one step further, giving brick-and-mortar retailers one more thing to complain about.

The Seattle-based online-retail powerhouse is launching a promotion on Dec. 10 that will attempt to get shoppers in retail environments to buy the products they are seeing in the store via Amazon at a discount, according to Direct Marketing News.

To qualify, consumers need to use Amazon’s Price Check mobile app to check out the price difference between something at the store and Amazon. “To compare pricing, consumers can scan a product's barcode, take its photo and speak or type its name via the app,” Amazon told DM News.Continue reading...

Cyber Monday, the first Monday after American Thanksgiving, is the busiest online shopping day of the year thanks to promotions by brands (such as Verizon, above) touting web-exclusive specials to lure (panicked) holiday shoppers. This year's Cyber Monday tally is expected to reach $1.2 billion in sales, topping last year's $1 billion Cyber Monday take, according to comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman.

As for the just passed Black Friday web sales, comScore reported Sunday that U.S. retail e-commerce spending rose 26% on Nov. 25th compared with the same day last year. The firm reported $816 million in online sales for the day, up from $648 million.

"Despite some analysts’ predictions that the flurry of brick-and-mortar retailers opening their doors early for Black Friday would pull dollars from online retail, we still saw a banner day for e-commerce with more than $800 million in spending,” commented comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni. "With brick-and-mortar retail also reporting strong gains on Black Friday, it’s clear that the heavy promotional activity had a positive impact on both channels."

Another web-only special returning year: in advance of Cyber Monday, U.S. officials have reportedly shut down more than 130 websites selling counterfeit goods by seizing their domain names.

YouTube is busy on one front trying to convince advertising execs to switch some of its dollars from television to online video. Meanwhile, it has found another source of revenue: e-commerce.

ITWeb reports that YouTube will now “allow its music partners to sell event tickets, merchandise and digital content via their video channels.”

YouTube senior technical account manager Christian Weitenberner writes on the site, “We're launching a feature called the Merch Store that will allow YouTube partners to offer fans merchandise directly on your channel.”

The site is partnered with such music vendors as Topspin, Songkick, iTunes, and Amazon, ITWeb notes. The rollout will come in the next few weeks. This comes on the heels of news that “Google is looking to unveil its own online music store,” ITWeb reports. The search site has “revived talks with record companies and is reportedly looking to release a new service in a matter of weeks.”Continue reading...

As post-Labor Day America thinks fashion (back to school and Fashion Week), it's prime time for Zara, the Spanish Goliath of "fast fashion," to make its digital push into the U.S. market in an effort to challenge its rivals Gap and H&M.

Starting today, Zara.com directs US visitors to the brand's American e-commerce site, a move it's promoting on Twitter with a #DearAmerica hashtag and a "Dear America" online exhibition of 50 photographers' takes on the 50 US states.Continue reading...

A new entrant in the highly competitive luxury e-commerce sales game, Joyus, is being closely watched as it aims to make over the bad image that infomercials gained on late-night TV through the years.

The reason: Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, the former Google executive who dreamed up Joyus after being named one of Fortune's 50 Most Powerful Women in Business (and one of its new "Valley Girls" shaking up Silicon Valley).

"If you think about the ways to sell online, video is underutilized," she observes to the New York Times' Bits blog. "It’s a new way for brands to merchandise their product."Continue reading...

It's not often thought of as a "brand," but the National Rifle Association has some of the highest brand recognition of any out there. Now, the NRA is making identifying with its brand easier with a whole new online shopping experience.Continue reading...

American Apparel may have been given only 18 months to live by Wall Street 24/7, but that’s not stopping the struggling brand from doing everything it can to survive.

Portfolio.com reports that the fashion retailer has partnered with eBay to “hopefully boost its Internet sales, which currently make up less than ten percent of the company's revenue.” The partnership kicks off Sept. 1.

The company is expecting it will generate several million dollars in sales in the first year, even though it will have to fork over a fee for each transaction performed on eBay, according to New York magazine.Continue reading...

In the video above, special agents codenamed k, g, and b, search for products and services with ‘deal appeal’ in a campaign for kgbdeals, an offshoot of New York-headquartered kgb, which has successfully worked its way to #3 in the UK's daily deals space.

In the past three months, Google searches for Groupon have increased by 78% compared to the first quarter of the year, according to Sky News, and 112% growth in the same period for Living Social.

But the largest increase came from kgbdeals, which reportedly saw a 443% rise in traffic to them via search engine marketing.Continue reading...