Economic Development

Facebook Fails to Attract the Shopping Dollars

Facebook may be one of the hottest online properties at the moment, but not everything it touches is turning to gold it seems. Reports out detail how large shopping businesses such as Gap and Game Stop have cancelled their Facebook shopping pages, less than a year after they were launched.

We know Facebook as the place to socialise, to keep track of events and to learn the happenings of our many ‘Friends’. But they are keen for us to look at it as a hub for shopping as well, which would prove to be a massive financial windfall for the company should they succeed. Things, however, are not going well.

Rise and Fall

A number of ‘big brands’ launched Facebook shopping front ends to a fanfare a year or so ago. Amongst the biggest were The Gap and Game Stop, two huge offline brands who also have their own online stores. They saw Facebook shops as a chance to get people shopping ‘where they live’ so to speak.

Already these brands had a presence on Facebook, with millions of people ‘liking’ their pages, allowing them to interact. So being able to use these channels to drive traffic to a store front without ever leaving Facebook would seem like a natural fit. After all people hang out at shopping malls and buy, so online they hang out at Facebook – they would be buying there too.

However things didn’t go according to plan. Whilst they may have access to millions through their pages, and millions more via advertising channels within Facebook, it seems that these store fronts were far from a success.

Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru put it best by saying that far from trying to sell to people hanging out at a shopping mall, it was more akin to ‘trying to sell to people hanging out in a bar’. It seems that with so much focus on interaction and socialising, people are not in a buying mood when they are on Facbook.

Of course that is not to say that big brands are suddenly flooding away from Facebook, far from it in fact. All maintain and actively grow their fans lists or ‘likes’, and many still pay good money for advertising to people via the Facebook advertising program. It’s just that, for now, brands are shelving plans to have store fronts on Facebook until someone can create a model that actually works.

For now Facebook is likely to continue to be another advertising channel for gaining new customers, increasing brand recognition, and promoting special offers. But with such a huge customer base no doubt brands will continue to experiment with different sales models online, so don’t count out a return of the Facebook store front just yet.

Until then it seems that the good money is in the driving of traffic to fan pages to get the all important likes. After which messages from that channel appear in peoples time lines, allowing promotional opportunities, such as a Straight Talk promo code, to appear, which gets people taking advantage of them, and sharing with their friends, increasing word of mouth.

Great value Gold

Gold for thousands of years had great value, and with the development of civilization, appreciated its usefulness in the monetary system. According to conservative and libertarian economics the presence of gold (or other rare and tamper-proof material) is not purely utilitarian dimension, since the time of gold coins were replaced by banknotes out by electronic money. Gold has real value as collateral for paper money. The major advantages of such a role of gold among conservatives:

- No authority can not be gold or by political pressure to change its course. This is to ensure the stability of an economy based on security in gold.

- For thousands of years the supply is constant (about 1-2% per year), shaped factors. Represented at that time ordering and stabilizing factor in the economy.

- It is durable, almost indestructible and acceptable in every age and place of the form of capital.

In trade, the basic unit of Troy ounces of gold is (jeweler), or 31.1035 grams. The name comes not from Troy Troy, but from the town of Troyes in the north-eastern France, in medieval times an important trading center. The gold price fixed five largest institutions including coin gold bullion trading. Currently these are: Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Société Générale.

Home loans for home improvement purposes

With home loans you can borrow over 90% up to 125% of your home value. If you have equity in your home then there is no better way to tap it then by applying for home loans. Home loans are wise financial way especially with low interest rates.

Home Loans

The interest rates on home loans are either fixed rate or adjustable rate. Depending on your inclination you can apply for either. A fixed rate home loan will have the same interest rate for the entire loan term. So if you apply for 15 or a 30 year loan term, the interest rate for home loan will remain unchanged. An adjustable rate home loan keeps fluctuating depending on the changes in the loan market. The adjustable rate home loans start with low interest rates. That is why more and more people opt for it. However, there is an uncertainty as to whether when they can rise.

With Home Loans, you can borrow from £3000-£500,000. Depending on the loan amount loan term can be 3-25 years. Home loans are offered to those who own or pay a mortgage on their home, cottage, flat or bungalow. Home loans can be used for any purpose. Home loans can finance some great plans relating to education, debt consolidation, home improvement, car purchase, vacation etc.

Home loans for debt consolidation are a financially viable plan. You can eliminate higher interest rate debts with home loans consolidation. High rate credit cards, unsecured loan or any other loan can be consolidated and replace by debt consolidation home loans. With lower interest rates and low monthly payments, you can save thousands of pounds with debt consolidation home loans.

Home loans for home improvement purposes can add equity to your home. The best thing with home improvement through home loans is that you are providing yourself with a good living environment and also increasing equity. Think carefully before making home improvement for every home improvement project may or may not add to the resale value.

Home loans are an option for you even if you do not fall under the A list for credit score. Home loans are provided to all those who have been suffering from credit problems like arrears, defaults, bankruptcy, discharge, late payments, CCJs etc. All those who are suffering from credit problems are considered as credit risks. Therefore, home loans for bad credit score carry higher interest rates. However, under no circumstances do they deteriorate ones chances of finding home loans.

Research and questioning are all related to the quest of finding a good home loan. The internet is full of options and browsing through them will lead you to a home loan that suits your finances. If you have any related questions don’t be afraid to ask. It is your right and would save a lot of trouble let alone your money. There are hidden costs and fees that might not be clear at the beginning and that can amount to a lot in terms of money. Ask for free quotes from various lenders. Compare and find out which one cost you less. Then make your final decision. Look for comfort level while opting for home loans. You should be able to pay for your monthly payments easily every month.

Ticket markets

Ticket markets raise a large variety of pricing questions that are of substantial interest for theoretical economists. They also offer a unique laboratory experiment for empiricists because they exhibit rich sources of price variations. Prices vary because seats are different, because seats are located in different places, because performances take place on different dates, because venues offer different complementary goods, or because the promoter bundles several tickets together in a season ticket package such as New York Rangers Tickets, to name just a few examples.

Some of these pricing issues have received scant attention as applications of broader economic theories. In the last ten to twenty years, however, ticket pricing as such has started to receive more attention. This recent interest has produced a set of papers that cover both theoretical and empirical issues. What will surprise the reader who fancies these issues is that many of them have been studied in isolation. Surprisingly enough, these works rarely reference each other. In fact, there are many disjoint works on ticket pricing but no real literature per se on the topic.

In ticket markets, firms do not sell a homogeneous good since no two seats offer the same experience. One does not see or hear the same way from two different seats in the premises. These differences in visibility and hearing will depend mostly on the distance to the performance. In extreme situations, consumers are so far away that they can barely see the performance but rather experience it on nearby television screens. Firms will take these differences in product quality into account and will accordingly sell different seats at different prices. You can analyze some tickets such as Rogers Centre Tickets, Toyota Center Tickets, and Boston Opera House tickets as your own literature.

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