E-Commerce

Good news for California deal-of-the-day addicts: the sales tax they have to pay when they use coupons purchased from Groupon, LivingSocial or other internet daily-deal sites has gone down. The California State Board of Equalization said sales tax should be levied only on what a Groupon user has paid for an item, not the list price of the item he’s getting.

In exchange for agreeing to a slower shipping method, Amazon will give Prime members a $1 credit to spend on music at its MP3 Store. Amazon's Prime membership program costs $79 for a year of unlimited fast shipping that includes free 2-day shipping, or 1-day shipping for $3.99 per item.

Cyber Monday, the term coined in 2005 when shoppers opted to take advantage of faster broadband internet in the workplace to do their online shopping, might be coming to an end.

Omni Ventures announced entry into an exclusive e-commerce licensing, sales, supply and distribution agreement along with the formation of a dedicated e-commerce division in line with the strategic diversification of its holdings. The goal of the division is to aggressively enhance the company's online marketing efforts and management of the PRVCY brand on the www.prvcycouture.com e-commerce platform.

The shopping season's biggest online holiday was more popular than ever yesterday as consumers rushed to the web for exclusive Cyber Monday deals. Online traffic was up 43 percent from last year, says content delivery network Akamai, and online sales were up 18 percent over Cyber Monday 2010 as of 9 p.m. ET, says IBM Smarter Commerce, a web performance analytics firm for 500 of the largest retail websites.

Amazon.com and Wal-Mart are prodding more manufacturers to change their packaging to cut waste and alleviate “wrap rage,” the frustration felt when a product is difficult to open. The retailers have been pushing vendors to eliminate excessive and cumbersome packing materials, such as hard plastic clamshell casings that enclose electronics and wire ties used to secure toys to cardboard backings.

For those keeping score, consumers’ voracious appetites for great deals on Thanksgiving and Black Friday this year helped secure this weekend’s place in the record books. According to a National Retail Federation survey conducted by BIGresearch over the weekend, traffic and spending were up both online and in stores, reaching historic highs.

China’s internet retailing market may overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest with transactions valued at more than $314 billion in 2015, according to Boston Consulting Group Inc. E-commerce sales in China almost quadrupled to 476 billion yuan in 2010 from 128 billion yuan in 2008 as 23 percent of its urban population shopped online last year.

Target has promoted Casey Carl to president of multichannel and senior vice president of merchandising, a move that will now have him oversee the recently relaunched Target.com. The discount store chain said that Carl, who most recently served as senior vice president of hardlines and as a co-lead on Target's multichannel steering committee, takes over the posts effective immediately.

Sellers on eBay Motors began receiving checks this month that were their portion of a $30 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit filed in 2009 by two sellers alleging that eBay charged excessive fees for listing items in the "Parts and Accessories" category.