Content Marketing

Convinced that consumers are finally ready to shop online for Picassos and choice Persian rugs in addition to car parts and Pez dispensers, Sotheby's, the blue-chip auction house, and eBay, the internet shopping giant, plan to announce Monday that they've formed a partnership to stream Sotheby's sales worldwide. Starting this fall, most of Sotheby's New York auctions will be broadcast live on a new section of eBay's website. Eventually the auction house expects to extend the partnership, adding online-only sales and streamed auctions taking place anywhere from Hong Kong to Paris to London. 

HSN has announced a multifilm marketing collaboration with Disney Studios for three upcoming movies: "Maleficent," "Cinderella" and "The Hundred-Foot Journey." According to the companies, this collaboration marks the first time that Disney Studios has enlisted an omnichannel retailer for a comprehensive marketing alliance. HSN said that in advance of the release of each film, it will create content-driven retail events across all of its platforms: TV, online, social and mobile. The shopping experiences will feature exclusive, curated assortments of products from HSN fashion, jewelry, beauty and home categories that are inspired by or reminiscent of each of the three films.

By putting you in close contact with the private lives of your customers, empathic research helps you see your product through the eyes of someone with values, concerns and emotional triggers that are different from your own. This perspective becomes absolutely critical when you are dealing with products that are highly personal — like photographs. So when I worked on a project involving the design and marketing of digital cameras during my time at Sony, empathic research on how the camera and its pictures were used became absolutely

If you need more evidence of major shifts going on in retail, a recent report says changing consumer expectations mean it's time to switch up the industry lingo. The report by PwC found that brands should forget what they've heard about "omnichannel," a piece of jargon that means retailers must have physical stores, as well as web and mobile sales platforms. The new buzzword is "total retail." "Consumers now view multichannel shopping as a given," said Steven Barr, PwC's U.S. retail and consumer practice leader. "Today's nonstop shoppers have taken things into their own hands, becoming more tech-savvy than retailers."

Barnes & Noble, the largest U.S. bookstore chain, is cutting jobs as revenue at its Nook tablet unit continues to shrink. "As we've aligned Nook's cost structure with business realities, staffing levels in certain areas of our organization have changed, leading to some job eliminations," Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman for the New York-based retailer, said in an email. She declined to say how many jobs were cut and from what areas of the company. Barnes & Noble reduced Nook prices during the holidays amid continued competition from Apple's iPad. 

Retailers are generally doing a pretty good job of maximizing the desktop user experience. They also seem to understand the importance of the mobile user experience. For many, however, mobile is synonymous with smartphones, not tablets. Slow load times are the biggest point of frustration for mobile web users; consequently, the next step in the evolution of mobile retail is the recognition and adoption of best practices that deliver a faster, more reliable and consistent user experience. 

An everything guide on how to be a successful omnichannel retailer in 2014

Anyone who has gone through a home improvement project knows what a hassle it can be to find a trusted professional to do electrical, plumbing and other work. Home improvement retailer Lowe's is backing a website that it believes can make the process better for its customers. Lowe's is partnering with a startup in Seattle, Porch.com, that's come up with a novel method for recommending home improvement professionals, one that the startup's executives say is resistant to the kind of manipulation that occurs on other review sites.

Barnes & Noble said on Wednesday that Michael Huseby, the head of its digital division, has been named chief executive, effective immediately. The largest U.S. bookstore chain had been without a CEO since William Lynch resigned in July in the wake of several quarters of poor sales of Barnes & Noble's Nook e-readers. Huseby joined Barnes & Noble as finance chief in March 2012, and last summer was made head of its Nook digital unit. The bookseller, which is contending with declining book sales, is set to report its holiday sales today.

For every sensible gift of a flannel nightgown, tie or pair of socks opened on Christmas, some merry prankster will be sneaking something edgier under the tree and into the stockings — a "Duck Dynasty" Beardhead, Roadkill Summer Sausage or perhaps Camouflage TP. At least that's the hope of the people at Burnsville, Minn.-based Northern Tool + Equipment, which also owns ­Kotula's, a catalog and online retailer with a good share of hardy, har har-type gifts.