Best Buy

Less than a month after the major security breach at Epsilon, Best Buy learned on April 22 that some of its customer email addresses were hacked from an unnamed third-party vendor.

Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is about to propose sweeping legislation that would impose a tax on all online purchases in a move aimed at closing states' budget shortfalls. Durbin's bill, dubbed the Main Street Fairness Act, intends to push online retailers to collect state sales tax on items purchased out of state. For more than a decade internet shoppers have enjoyed a sales tax holiday as a result of sales tax moratoriums established in 1998 to foster growth in the digital sales business. But with e-commerce businesses like Amazon.com no longer fledgling entities, and with states' budget deficits growing, imposing an e-commerce sales tax has become a hot-button issue.

You may already know there are 5 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide. Under current trends, mobile phones will surpass PCs as the device most commonly used to access the web. You may be surprised to find out that 200 million people access Facebook through mobile devices. These people are twice as active on Facebook, so it appears that having internet access anytime, anywhere via a mobile device creates twice the engagement.

Cart abandonment is a sensitive topic for almost every online retailer. Many companies and universities are conducting research on the data behind abandonment to find what ultimately causes consumers to place an item in their cart and then leave a retailer’s website before executing a purchase. Forrester Research finds that roughly 38 percent of all shopping carts are abandoned, while other data sources put that figure as high as 70 percent.

Best Buy has set a goal of doubling its $2 billion in annual online revenues within the next three years to five years as it reduces its total brick-and-mortar store square footage by 10 percent. Best Buy executives say these decisions, announced at its recent 2011 Investor and Analyst Day, are based on overall traffic growth, driven primarily by the company's web properties.

Best Buy said it will boost its web presence, shrink some larger stores and open more of its smaller U.S. stores to try to win back market share from the likes of Amazon and Wal-Mart.

An internal battle is raging at Microsoft over whether and how fast the company should open more retail stores. According to sources close to the company, CEO Steve Ballmer and COO Kevin Turner are both hot on the idea of matching — or even surpassing—  Apple's retail presence of over 300 stores. The stores are a big reason for Apple's success in the last decade, as they give customers opportunities to play with products like the iPad and iPhone.

All sorts of merchants are experimenting on Facebook. But does this mean Facebook is en route to becoming a major e-commerce player? Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru says the answer is a resounding “No.”

Maybe Blockbuster stores have a future after all. Based on a list of potential bidders for the company, its stores could soon morph into foreign-owned food or phone stores.

Best Buy, TiVo and Walgreens are the latest in a string of companies hacked over the weekend. Fraudsters gained access to customers’ files, including email addresses. Epsilon, the communications provider of the companies, issued a brief statement saying “a full investigation was under way” of the breach of some customer client data was discovered.