ABSTRACT
For experienced e-commerce sites as well as the many newcomers, the holiday guessing game is in full swing.What’s going to be the top seller? How many people are needed to get merchandise out the door? Will the company’s executives be spending their Christmas Eve packing $59.95 crème brûléemaking kits (complete with blowtorch) instead of wrapping presents with their families? ‘If we had a Magic 8 ball, we’d be perfect,’ said Tracy Randall, chief operating officer of Santa Monica-based Cooking.com. ‘This isn’t a science, it’s an art.’ For many Web sites, it’s an art that must be refined in the coming years. Americans are projected to spend $6 billion shopping online during the 1999 holiday season, according to Jupiter Communications, compared with $3.2 billion a year ago. By 2003, U.S. consumers could be spending more than $70 billion online during the holidays. But in the Internet world, 2003 is a long time off, and the lessons learned by Christmases past are tentatively being put into effect this year.
