Dec 25, 2008

Shop talk: Lessons gleaned from the holiday shopping seasonBy Mai HoangYakima-Herald.com

I am a student of shopping.

I get my thrill from watching people shop, learning why people shop and discovering how shopping habits affect people and the world around them.

Not surprisingly, the holiday shopping season was a gold mine of information. Now that Christmas has come and gone, here are the top five things I learned about the shopping world this holiday season.

1. Retailers leaned on the Internet.

Retailers have been on the Internet for several years, but during this holiday season, Internet shopping went to a new level, especially as industry experts predicted that retailers with an online strategy would fare better this year.

Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and text messaging were among the ways retailers communicated deals and promotions.

When Target executives saw that many of their customers accessed the store’s Web site on an iPhone, Target created the “Target Gift Globe,” an application that gave gift suggestions with a shake of the iPhone.

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