Gene Alvarez

An interesting story on a court ruling that enabled students to rate teachers sparked an equally interest discuss discussion around reviewing people performance.
As the e-commerce person here, I have been talking with clients about product rating for years. It has been my belief that with all product review ratings the reader should apply the [...]

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An interesting phenomenon that I am seeing is that a company can go bankrupt and yet its online store can outlive the physical business. Take for example Linen – N – Things (www.lnt.com) and Circuit City (http://www.circuitcity.com/) both who filed for bankruptcy and closed their stores in 2009 have new owners of their website [...]

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Ok, I have been swamped with client inquiries, research and the upcoming Internet Retailer Conference (Come to my session if you are there it will be quite interesting. http://www.internetretailer.com/IRCE2009/session_detail.asp?sess_id=76 ). Anyway, I was up late last night planning my much-needed vacation and being a web person I used an online booking service that I [...]

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In a discussion on social software and online selling, Amazon is one of the most often used examples.
However, in the examples used in these discussions Amazon’s perceived image is different to each person. So as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Amazon’s business model is in the eyes of the user. For example, [...]

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The other day in my blog, I asked my followers to vote. The vote was for me to tweet or blog. Additionally, I posted a link that asked my Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Plaxo friends to “Please read my blog”. What I found out from this little experiment was interesting. Putting aside people saying I [...]

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Ever wonder why e-commerce sales for your organization aren’t as high as you think they should be? Well I can tell you one possible reason the shopping to check out process could be harder than just driving somewhere to buy the item. For example, I own two GPS devices for my cars and I wanted [...]

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I was surfing through some of the midday news items online and came across the story of the Girl Scout that used a facebook with Youtube to sell cookies and that caught my eye. It seems as though the Girl Scouts themselves are not ready for online selling but that this little girl (with the [...]

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Well after a bout with laptops that were either stepped on by a fellow traveler or died while in front of a client. I’ve finally back online with yet another loaner until my laptop reachs full health. Anyway, I’m at our mobile and wireless show and one of the keys words on attendee lips is [...]

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Well I finally got my new laptop after my old one died, so I’m back to trying to catch up with everything including my blogging.
I know we all have been hearing about the slow holiday sales but I couldn’t help think that there are shoppers out there using their smart phones for price [...]

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As I was watching the varying reports on Black Friday come across the news over the weekend, and the chatter of Cyber Monday followed, I began to wonder how much of this was just good promotion versus the hype typically associated with these events, especially Cyber Monday. One of the foundational tenets of Cyber Monday [...]

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