Like a lot of people I hate going to the mall. Also, because it's good experience for my job here at WebWatch, I do all my shopping online, and that includes the house I bought almost two years ago. So this Christmas I decided buy all my Christmas gifts via the Web. I quickly ran into the "hot toy" phenomenon, which I hadn't experienced before, other than seeing those awful video clips of people trampling each other in a store trying to grab the last Elmo doll. But it was a useful education, and I learned the following lessons, which will influence my own habits:
1) The cheapest, best place to buy something is not necessarily online. I know this sounds counter-intuitive and counter-mythological, but keep reading.
2) You can get price-gouged even on the "best" sites. Ludicrously, in some cases.
3) Sometimes there's no substitute for driving to your local Target, or K-Mart or whatever.

4) It can be easy to give in to the "hot toy" phenomenon online when you really want to buy something for your child and the choices and options seem limited. Throw in the Christmas deadline and you're really under some pressure.
Here's how it went: I went hunting for four toys, all Fisher-Price: The Kid-Tough Digital Camera (MSRP $70); the Sing & Go Choo-Choo (MSRP $30); the Twin Time Doll House (MSRP $60); and the Kid-Tough FP3 Player (MSRP $70). Note this information comes from the Fisher-Price site, where you can't really buy stuff, though you can click on partner links to vendors like Target, K-Mart and Toys 'R Us. Also note the shopping was done about three weeks before Christmas, then re-checked today.
The digital camera was nowhere to be found in-stock on major toy retailers. Via a search, PriceGrabber and NexTag showed low prices of $89 on Amazon.com. Upon clicking through, however, Amazon showed a price via third-party seller of $129, near 2X the manufacturer's price. On NexTag, I found a $59 price, but clicking on it produced a notice the seller had been banned. On Froogle: Initially, nothing. Today, Froogle is pointing to eBay auctions for $109 and up, but you should expect that kind of thing in an auction. By the way, Froogle turned out to be the most honest shopping tool over the course of this search, saying it found no items rather than returning results at ridiculous prices.
The camera wound up being the hottest toy of the four, and nowhere to be found. I gave up on it.
The toy train was, again, nowhere in stock at the major toy retailers. A search on NextTag showed some boutique shops selling it for $59. While trying to buy it, I was informed it was no longer in stock. Amazon, again through a third party, wanted $89.99. PriceGrabber didn't have it at all.
The doll house produced the same scenario. Amazon was the only place I could find one, selling for more than $100 through a third party. I was getting frustrated by now. I went to the Target.com site, and noticed a lookup function in which you could check to see if the nearest store had what you wanted in stock. According to Target's site, my local store in Danbury, Connecticut had the doll house and the toy train, so off I went, and got the doll house for $30 -- yes, $30 -- found out that there were, in fact, no toy trains in stock, but happened upon the last "FP3" player in pink for my daughter, selling for $50. So, by going to the local Target, I saved about $75. And don't forget: No shipping charges, no hand-wringing over whether it would get shipped to my house in time for Christmas.
In all, the Web did me no real good whatsoever. Yes, I was able to look up the local Target store and its stock, but I could have just picked up the phone and done the same thing. In fact, doing that may have produced a more accurate result, since the Target Web site was wrong about the toy train being in stock.
So:
* The shopping tool sites need to make sure their information is current. Showing an $89 result that leads to an actual purchase price of $129 is bait-and-switch.
* Amazon and other aggregators and marketplaces should discourage the practice of price-gouging, in order to preserve some brand integrity, unless they want to be thought of as analogues to auction sites.
* Consider Froogle as a shopping search tool. They came out reputable in this informal exercise, and they also don't permit paid-placement results.

Posted by Beau Brendler at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In about a month WebWatch will release two reports addressing online journalism topics. One of the reports is an analysis of how well the 10 most-trafficked and the bottom 10 of the top 100 most-trafficked news Web sites separate editorial content from advertising. On that topic, this is good reading -- from the Wall Street Journal's op-ed section, of all places, written by the top honcho of Dow Jones.

After the topic in this piece called "the exaggerated tendency toward pessimism," along with the stuff about the Japanese century and whatnot, the author should have considered adding an opposite, the "exaggerated tendency towards optimism," addressing the almost 10 years (around 1992 to 2000) of drooling, frothing media hype about the Internet. Disclosing my bias: I'm speaking as someone who, over the past 10 years, has never lived more than 90 minutes from midtown Manhattan, and yet has never been able, through phone companies, cable companies, satellite providers or anyone else, in residences in Long Island, central New Jersey, southern Putnam County at the Connecticut border, etc., etc., been able to get anything better at home than a 48K dialup connection to the Internet. What's the deal, Earthlink, Optimum, Dish Network, Verizon?
I'm told there are actually parts of Silicon Valley in the same situation, and I believe it.
No wonder so many people do their online shopping and recreational surfing from work.

Posted by Beau Brendler at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)