Posted by: Andy on December 30th, 2004
Category: eBay
Viewed: 1,197 times
It happens every holiday season. Millions of people receive unwanted gifts — whether the wrong size, the wrong style, or just plain wrong. According to a new survey commissioned by eBay, 64 percent admit to “regifting,” or secretly giving unwanted gifts to others. For those who prefer to avoid getting caught regifting, there is an alternative: selling unwanted gifts online. In fact, 20 percent of survey respondents indicated they have sold unwanted gifts over the Internet.
The online reselling trend represents a new twist on regifting that allows people to turn tepid gifts into cold cash — enabling them to get what they really wanted for the holidays or to pay down holiday credit card bills.
“Practically everyone gets gifts they just don’t want — and it’s better to turn them into something useful than to throw them in a closet,” says eBay’s Jim “Griff” Griffith. “By selling unwanted gifts online people can avoid the potential regifting embarrassment, and best of all, buyers can find some amazing deals from sellers who paid nothing for their gifts.”
If you live in Vancouver and would like to learn how to get starting selling on eBay, check out eBusiness Connection’s upcoming seminar on January 8th.
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Posted by: Andy on December 29th, 2004
Category: General eBusiness
Viewed: 1,047 times
Web conferencing has been around for awhile but I have never found myself that interested in using it… until now. Gerry Blackwell writes this week about a Canadian company that has managed to make web conferencing work for them by using it to pre-qualify customers and start the selling process online. Desire2Learn Inc. of Kitchener is using web conferencing to make their employees more productive. By introducing their products through web conferencing, sales staff are no longer wasting time travelling, and when they do travel, they have already gone through the pre-qualifying process with the prospect and are more likely to close the sale.
This case study is a win-win for Canadian small businesses as Desire2Learn is using the web conferencing services of Enunciate Conferencing, a Toronto based company that made it onto Profit magazine’s “Hot 50” this year as one of Canada’s fastest growing emerging companies.
Advice to small businesses in 2005 - look for situations where distributed teams need to communicate and work together and you may find web conferencing is the solution.
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Posted by: Andy on December 28th, 2004
Category: Reports & Resources
Viewed: 907 times
Over the holidays, I read a great report (PDF) titled Western Canada’s Small Business Markets: A Survery of Selling. Compiled by the University of Alberta’s Western Centre for Economic Research (WCER), the report will enable businesspeople to better understand current marketing channels. The report examines markets served by small businesses, barriers to entering national and international markets, effectiveness of advertising methods and the role of informal avenues for maintaining and expanding a customer base. Raw data for the report was collected through a survey of 670 western Canadian small business owners.
As you may have noticed by now, I’m always looking for an e-business angle when reading reports like this, so I was happy to read that 62% of the small businesses surveyed had a website.
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Posted by: Andy on December 27th, 2004
Category: e-Commerce
Viewed: 979 times
Amazon.com today announced it has finished its busiest holiday season ever during which time it set a single-day record with more than 2.8 million units ordered, or 32 items per second, worldwide. Additionally, even while its book business set a new Thanksgiving Weekend record, consumer electronics sales surpassed book sales on www.amazon.com that weekend and was Amazon’s largest sales category for the first time.
Have a look at their press release for some interesting Amazon.com holiday facts - they certainly shed some light on what the most popular gifts were this Christmas season.
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Posted by: Andy on December 24th, 2004
Category: General eBusiness
Viewed: 755 times
We’ll be taking a break for the next couple of days, spending time with friends and family, and we hope you’ll have the opportunity to do the same. We wish you the best during this holiday season. And a Happy Belated Festivus to all!
Sheena and Rob
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