Yahoo! Inc. bulked up its online shopping area,
adding new merchants including saksfifthavenue.com, Target, Circuit City,
JCPenney.com, eToys, Handspring and Crutchfield.
The e-commerce enabler also launched a new holiday gift center, “designed to
help consumers take the guesswork out of finding the perfect gift.”
Featured in the gift center is Yahoo! Shopping’s gift recommender, which
helps people find gifts based on their friends’ or families’ personalities,
whether they are “Gadget Guys,” “Domestic Goddesses” or “Techie Teens.”
Also at the gift center is Yahoo! Gift Ideas, which helps people shop by
price for
gifts in categories under $25, $50, $100 and $500. Another feature is the
gift search that selects merchandise based on combinations of gender, age,
interest and price.
And in the spirit of the season, Yahoo! also set up a program so that
shoppers may donate their Yahoo! Points to one of five charity funds. Through
an agreement with JustGive.org, every Yahoo! Point donated by consumers will
be matched by a 1 cent charity donation from Yahoo!, up to a total of $25,000
for all the funds. Charity funds include the Animals Fund, Children & Youth
Fund, Housing & Shelter Fund, Hunger & Poverty Fund and the Peace Fund.
Meanwhile, the company said that a survey conducted on the Yahoo! network
found that about three quarters (74 percent) of Yahoo! users intend to
conduct their gift buying online this holiday season.
Other findings: Nearly three quarters (72 percent) of respondents stated that
brand name merchants are an important factor in influencing their online
purchasing decisions, while
almost half (46 percent) of people intending to buy something this holiday
season estimated they would spend more than $200 online.
Gift suggestions or recommendations will be used by nearly half (47 percent)
of the people polled, according to the survey results.