At Tamagoya, Mr. Sugahara has turned his company’s reliance on the fax and standard telephones into an art form. Every morning, orders for about 62,000 lunches pour in, about half by fax. Most of those lunches are cooked and put onto trucks even before the last order is taken. A small army of 100 fax and telephone operators carefully coordinate deliveries, and fewer than 60 lunches — or 0.1 percent — are wasted
EVERY day enormous lorries arrive at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea to deliver around 100,000 vehicle tax payments sent by post. Only half of the 46m payments made each year happen online, even though three-fourths of Britons buy their car insurance via the web.
Some sites, for example, gave discounts based on whether or not a person was using a mobile device. A person searching for hotels from the Web browser of an iPhone or Android phone on travel sites Orbitz and CheapTickets would see discounts of as much as 50% off the list price, Orbitz said. Both sites are run by Orbitz Worldwide Inc., OWW -3.77% which in fact markets the differences as “mobile steals.” Orbitz says the deals are also available on the iPad if a person installs the Orbitz app.
Bridal Brokerage enabling brides and grooms-to-be to buy ceremony and party plans that others have abandoned.
PAGE 138: In the EU15 in 2011, excluding the financial sector, more than 46% of employees used a computer connected to the Internet at work. Iceland is leading the trend within the OECD: in 2005 nearly half of all employees in companies were connected to the Internet, and by 2011 nearly all employees had an Internet connection at work. The use of Internet-connected computers at work is particularly high in the Nordic countries (Figure 4.8). Similarly, in Korea in 2009 three out of five employees used the Internet for work (NIA, 2010). In Canada, 52% of private sector employees already had access to the Internet in 2002 (Statistics Canada, 2003)
PAGE 14: In 2003, less than four out of ten companies had broadband access in the EU15; by 2009, this proportion had increased to nine firms out of ten. At the end of 2011, nearly all companies in OECD countries were connected to the Internet. In two thirds of OECD countries, more than 95% of the companies use the Internet, with only a small proportion of the smallest businesses not yet connected; in 2010, only 5.7% of small firms (10-49 employees) in the EU25 were not accessing the Internet
PAGE 14: In 2010, on average, 35% of all businesses with ten or more persons employed used the Internet for purchasing, and only 18% for selling goods and services
PAGE 149: Companies generated more than 4% of their turnover through sales via a website in approximately one third of OECD countries in 2011
PAGE 150: In 2011, 10 countries reported that over 80% of firms used the Internet to return completed forms to public authorities. In two thirds of OECD countries, 70% of firms supply forms electronically (Figure 4.20). The ultimate goal of public authorities is to move to a fully electronic process to take advantage of efficiency gains and improve the process for companies
PAGE 112: More than 30% of people in the OECD buy goods or services over the Internet (Figure 3.13). In the United Kingdom, almost 64% of individuals engage in e-commerce, followed by Australia, Denmark, Germany, Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden with more than 50%.
Chart from page 273 of the new OECD report that estimates the proportion of revenue from ecommerce in the US in 2010, for different industries
More than 2m people from 100 countries watched online video of Topshop’s Spring/Summer 2012 Unique show in the three hours after the fashion retailer live streamed it Sunday…
Topshop built considerable buzz in the days leading up to the show by promising consumers a “personalized” and shoppable live stream experience. Viewers could click on clothes and accessories to browse color options as they came down the catwalk, and create screenshots and video clips to share instantly on Facebook, Topshop said. They could also order makeup for delivery within 48 hours, and select apparel and accessories for delivery in six to eight weeks… Several looks sold out within an hour… At least one sold out before the show was even over
China’s largest e-commerce firm, Alibaba Group, expects to sell merchandise this year worth more than that sold by Amazon Inc and eBay combined
- Cashna is only one of a slew of new payment services in the Middle East. CashU, the region’s most popular e-wallet, handles payments for the likes of Skype and Al Jazeera Sports. OneCard, another e-wallet, can be topped up in many ways, including with scratch cards sold by street vendors. Gate2Play has gathered regional payment services and Western ones—PayPal, MasterCard and Visa—under one virtual roof; merchants only have to connect to Gate2Play to access them all....
ByBox, a British firm, charges shoppers about £2 ($3.15) to retrieve a parcel from one of its 1,350 locations around the country. Other locker networks are free. Delivery firms can save lots of money by sending a batch of parcels to a single place, where delivery is guaranteed, so they are naturally keen to provide the service. Nine out of ten Germans live or work within about ten minutes of free lockers operated by Deutsche Post DHL. The French and Turkish post offices also provide free locker services.
Two-fifths of online shoppers said they stopped buying products from a website following a troublesome delivery, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG)
The next platform war: Google play vs. Apple iTunes - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech
the most important announcement Apple made at its World Wide Developers Conference two weeks ago was that the company now has 400 million credit cards on file — double last year’s total and more than any other online retailer, including Amazon
426.9m Europeans online across 28 markets … from Belgium to Bulgaria, UK to Ukraine - Europeans are more connected than ever before
96% of European internet users research online for purchases, 87% shop online and almost one fifth (19%) of all their shopping is done via the internet. In a six month period Europeans spent €188 billion buying goods and services online – an average of €544 per European online shopper. Norwegian internet shoppers averaged the highest spend online (€1,162) followed by Swiss (€919) and Danish (€894) online shoppers. UK internet users devote the greatest share of total shopping spend to online (32.0%) followed by German (25.4%).
Australian Bureau of Statistics research released today showed local businesses received online orders worth $189 billion in the 12 months to June 30, 2011, an increase of $46 billion, or 32 per cent, on the previous corresponding period. The number of businesses receiving orders online also increased by 13 per cent over the same period to 28 per cent…. However, only 35 per cent of retail businesses had received online orders, with just 44 per cent in the sector having a website.
