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Sears Holdings is letting consumers order groceries, pharmaceutical prescriptions and other products using their smartphones and pick them up at the nearest Kmart or get them delivered. Sears launched its mygofer service to respond to the evolution of the traditional grocery store concept from bricks-and-mortar stores to shopping for food and prescriptions online and directly via consumers' phone.

Mobile applications can be exciting, even essential tools, but the majority fall short when it comes to getting consumers to download them. Is the hype greater than the apps themselves? My company wanted to find out, so it recently conducted a national study to help marketers better understand who uses mobile apps and what makes an app a "favorite."

Brands want to sell, shoppers want to buy. It may seem like a simple 1+1= 2 formula, but the digital shopping market is becoming more and more saturated with new forms of technology — e.g., social media, iPads, mobile phone apps. That, in turn, makes it even tougher for brands to convince shoppers to click and buy their products.

Google is getting into the online deal-a-day game with a program of its own, a move that may cause Groupon to break a little sweat.

The time is now for wholesale and retail companies to get their act together by making sure that their customers can search and find their product offers with a simple Google search.

Google is constantly finding new ways to improve online search. Its efforts are increasingly geared towards local product listings. Google Local Shopping, a free service, makes it easier for merchants to list their local products online and for consumers to find these commodities.

Google has launched a new version of Google Goggles that's faster and smarter than ever before. The new Goggles 1.3 client for Android can scan barcodes almost instantly. All versions of Goggles can now recognize print ads in popular magazines and newspapers. 

Google reportedly will debut a payment and advertising service for retail mobile payments this year.

Although Wire-Sculpture.com already had strong and aggressive marketing strategies in place, including Google AdWords and Yahoo marketing, it still lacked the extra umph it needed to meet its full potential.

Google unveiled its newest search enhancement, Google Instant Previews (GIP), in November. Denoted by a small magnifying glass to the right of a search listing, GIP allows searchers to look at a mini version (also called a snippet) of a specific web page before they commit to clicking on it. Is this a game changer? Not exactly, but it certainly does make things interesting.