For the fourth quarter, it is trying to achieve the same status as an online brand. The company became a tenant on AOL's shopping channel in October and was planning a similar deal with Microsoft. It has purchased several keyword buys on Yahoo, including the inventory that eToys didn't purchase for the key word toy, and it has bought ad space on Yahoo's home page for the last week in November and the first week in December, positioning that Anderson believes will yield about 30 million impressions. The Web site's URL appeared on every page of its holiday paper catalog, the company's first general-audience direct mail and ordering catalog, which was sent to several million households in October. Online shoppers are loyal, says Forrester's Maria LaTour Kadison, a senior analyst.
Convenience is the number-one factor that keeps shoppers coming back.
Good retail sites can add features to make shopping more convenient, such as storing customers' credit card numbers and shipping addresses so that they don't need to rekey them on every visit. As Web shopping evolves from a dry, catalog-type experience to a more multimedia experience, mass merchandisers' background in stimulating and entertaining customers will come to bear. Smart mass merchandisers will also be able to take advantage of marketing and distribution synergy between their online efforts and their retail stores. This battle is going to be fought over 10 years, not 1 year, and not over what was the Internet but what it will become.