Savvy shopping.Two L.A.-based Web sites are cashing in on the expanding online holiday shopping sector. PriceGrabber.com, a comparison shopping site owned by Experian Group Ltd., estimates it generated leads to merchants worth $248 million on the Friday after Thanksgiving, normally the busiest retail day of the year. Electronics dominated the five top-selling categories of the day: Digital Cameras, plasma & LCD TVs A flat panel TV that uses LCD technology or a rear-projection TV that is based on LCD microdisplay panels. See flat panel TV, rear-projection TV and LCD. , MP3 players A digital music player that supports the MP3 format, which was the audio format that started a revolution in online music downloads and distribution. All portable music players, the iPod being the most popular, support MP3 along with one or more other audio formats. , electronic toys and notebook computers. But for the month of November, the biggest percentage gainers included toys (an uptick Uptick A transaction occurring at price above its previous transaction. In order for an uptick to occur, a transaction price must be followed by an increased transaction price. of 225 percent since last year), sporting goods Noun 1. sporting goods - sports equipment sold as a commodity commodity, trade good, good - articles of commerce sports equipment - equipment needed to participate in a particular sport (178 percent) and apparel (128 percent). "The force behind this momentum is savvy shoppers, more of whom use the Internet for their research and holiday shopping," said Kamran Pourzanjani, president of PriceGrabber.com. The other L.A.-based site, ThisNext.com, tries to make product research fun. At the social shopping Social shopping is a method of e-commerce in which consumers shop in a social networking environment similar to MySpace. Using the wisdom of crowds, users communicate and aggregate information about products, prices, and deals. network site, visitors recommend products to each other in 22 different categories. Users can organize their favorites into play lists called "shopcasts," based on lifestyle, activities or the products themselves. In addition to personal recommendations, ThisNext has professional recommendations from interior designers, small business owners, chefs, artists, Olympic athletes, authors and "fashionistas." According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Chief Executive Gordon Gould Gordon Gould (July 17, 1920 — September 16, 2005) was an American physicist who is widely (but not universally) credited as the inventor of the laser. He is best known for his thirty-year fight with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to obtain patents for the , the site "helps consumers wade through the 60 million products available out there to discover new products of interest in a natural and legitimate way from their peers." Both PriceGrabber and ThisNext work off the advertising-based Web model. PriceGrabber refers shoppers to 8,800 vendors, while ThisNext works the same way with affiliate programs to move shoppers to e-tailing sites. Like catalogue shopping for a previous generation, online shopping offers convenience but demands foresight, since shipping and processing time have to figure into the purchase decision. As a result, PriceGrabber's Holiday Shopping Survey, released in early November, indicated that 60 percent of online shoppers started their gift gathering before Thanksgiving. However, 70 percent still expect to be shopping during the last five days before the holiday. Staff reporter Joel Russell can be reached at jrussell@labusinessjournal.com, or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 237. |
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