Today is
Cyber Monday, "the official start of the online holiday shopping season." As a result, my inbox has been flooded with articles about online shopping from a variety of news sources. They haven't contained any surprises: Canadians are buying more online from U.S. retailers; eBay sales to Canadians are up; online sales are still a small percentage of overall retail sales (in Canada they account for 3 percent, says
Jim Okamura, a senior partner in the Chicago office of the
J.C. Williams Group, a Toronto-based retail consulting group, in an article in today's edition of
The Toronto Star See "Virtual cross-border shopping" by Dana Flavelle); etc.
However, my interest in online shopping was piqued a few weeks ago by an article that appeared in the November 5th, 2007 edition of
Canadian Business. It was called "As Seen on TV." In it, writer Zena Olijnyk reported on the growth of web sites that offer consumers the clothes, accessories, even household furnishings that appear on television shows such as
Gossip Girl,
Brothers & Sisters,
The L Word,
America's Next Top Model,
Desperate Housewives, and more. She writes that these websites (
.starbrand.tv,
seenON.com and
starstyle.com) "are developing a more subtle way for manufacturers and merchandisers to get their advertising message out." She also points out that there are "thousands upon thousands of products embedded in shows like Gossip Girl and America's Next Top Model." What really fascinated me was Olijnyk's description of two 15-year-old girls in Toronto watching an episode of Gossip Girl, using
Facebook to discuss the fashions on the show, and then being able to click on a site and order the same ballet flats that one of the characters wore in that episode. Amazing. It's a perfect storm of celebrity obsession and consuming.
These kids are the computer generation. I have nieces and nephews who range in age from 17 to 6. The six-year-old's favorite subject in school is "computer." And for the others, communicating using MSN and Facebook and text messaging is as normal as breathing--and shopping.