Not such a Merry Christmas at eBay (EBAY)

Michael Fowlkes — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:40:00 EST

Filed under: Bad News, Products and Services, Consumer Experience, Competitive Strategy, eBay (EBAY), Wal-Mart (WMT), Amazon.com (AMZN), Sears Holdings (SHLD)

While this is a week when many of us are celebrating and enjoying some much needed time with friends and family, things are not looking so cheerful over at eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) as slow sales and low traffic are hurting sales on the popular online auction site (subscription required).

This is the first holiday season for the company under its new CEO, John Donahoe, and things are definitely not looking too jolly. According to research firm comScore Inc., the site has been losing a lot of valuable traffic to its competitors, such as Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) that have more fixed-price products for consumers to purchase, an area where eBay is still lagging.

For the period of November 3 through December 14, a time when many of us were busy spending hours online researching those perfect presents to hand out this holiday, eBay was just not getting the hits that it usually does, and traffic was down by 16% from the same period last year. In contrast, Amazon was enjoying a modest increase in traffic of 6% during the same time frame.

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Not such a Merry Christmas at eBay (EBAY) originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sears getting sear-ious about online?

Zack Miller — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:10:00 EST

Filed under: Microsoft (MSFT), Wal-Mart (WMT), Sears Holdings (SHLD)

I wrote a couple weeks ago about a very serious issue with Sears.com's privacy policy. It seemed that Sears Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD) had a major issue with their online offering. Sears has finally taken the issue seriously and disabled the bug in their how-to-figure-out-how-much-your-next-door-neighbor-paid-for-his-plasma-TV search function on the Sears website.

This morning, WSJ.com reports (subscription required) that an ex-Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) executive is being appointed head of Sears' newly formed online division, one of five such divisions the retailer is forming as part of a turnaround. The article says that James Barr, a 12-year Microsoft executive and general manager of MSN Shopping and Marketplaces, will take over the online unit effective Feb. 2 as a senior vice president of Sears Holdings.

Barr joins former Walmart.com executive, Neil Day, the newly-named Chief Technology Officer for the Sears.com group.

These changes are being made by Chairman Eddie Lampert as he tries to boost sales and stave off further profit losses.

It appears one of my personal favorites, LandsEnd's, LandsEnd.com, will not be part of this unit, which will include Kmart.com and Sears.com.

Zack Miller is the Managing Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com and a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund. Author holds no positions in stocks mentioned above.

Sears getting sear-ious about online? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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