So Who’s Laughing Now?

A study of online retailers by Shop.org with The Boston Consulting Group found that while all online retailers have wrestled with operational issues and improving their performance in key areas such as customer acquisition and buyer conversion, catalog-based online marketers fared better than their store-based or Web-only counterparts. The fourth-annual study (released in May) reveals that currently 72 percent of catalogers, 43 percent of store-based retailers and 27 percent of Web-based retailers are profitable at an operating level.