Web Research for Store Shopping Grows 50% During Thanksgiving Week - Furniture Search Ranked #2

Furniture World Magazine

The number of consumers who used the Internet to research items for purchase at local stores grew by more than 50% during the Thanksgiving shopping period this year compared to 2003, according to figures released today by CrossMedia Services, Inc., the leading provider of web-to-store marketing solutions for national and local retailers. Overall, 51.6% more shoppers used the online advertisements of CrossMedia Services' retail clients this year than last to find what they wanted to buy at stores during this year's nine-day Thanksgiving shopping period (Nov. 20-28), the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. CrossMedia Services, which hosts web information about in-store promotions for retail giants such as Target, Sears, Home Depot, Office Depot and Best Buy, reports that nearly 11 million visitors looked online for specials being promoted at retail stores this season. CrossMedia Services also offers consumers the opportunity to research across stores through its local shopping portal -- ShopLocal.com. ShopLocal is the leading web site in the rapidly growing local shopping segment of the Internet. During Thanksgiving Week, flat-screen LCD and plasma televisions were the leading items shoppers researched on ShopLocal.com. Rounding out the top 10 searches on ShopLocal.com were: furniture, digital cameras, iPods, DVD players, Xbox video game consoles, standard televisions, shoes and PlayStation2. ShopLocal.com uses a zip-code search engine that allows users to find stores within a specific radius. Retailers use ShopLocal.com to find shoppers who search by product category, store or brand name. ShopLocal.com is a sanity-saving tool that is especially useful during holiday shopping season. By using ShopLocal.com, shoppers go online to find what's on sale at the stores they want to visit. The site is updated daily to reflect current sales. It also allows consumers to create personal shopping lists online that they can print and bring to stores. Consumers can receive e-mail alerts for sale items and favorite stores. CrossMedia Services, Inc. is the industry expert on web-to-store marketing and the leading provider of turnkey solutions for brick and mortar retailers, catalog retailers and industrial catalogers that enable the targeting of promotions to shoppers via the Internet. CrossMedia Services transforms printed promotions (such as sales circulars, catalogs, run-of-press ads, direct mail, etc.) into an interactive Web format. Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB), and Knight Ridder, Inc. (NYSE: KRI), are partners in CrossMedia Services, Inc. and other joint ventures to provide consumers access to great online products such as CareerBuilder.com, Cars.com and Apartments.com.