To encourage shoppers to buy from multiple merchants while holiday shopping for gifts, online shopping mall Shop.com is offering free shipping valued up to $250 per order through the end of the year, it said today.
“The whole purpose of this is to draw attention to the fact that Shop.com is a one-stop shop and to stimulate shopping across multiple merchants at a busy time,” president Bruce Sellers tells InternetRetailer.com.
Under the terms of the free-shipping offer, customers order products from multiple merchants through a single checkout process, then pay shipping for the item with the highest shipping charge. Although shoppers still incur shipping fees from all merchants that charge for shipping, Shop.com immediately credits their accounts for all but one retailer’s fee, Sellers says.
Sellers says he expects the free-shipping promotion will be a cost-effective way to promote shopping from multiple merchants. “This is somewhat of a risky ploy,” he says. “But with the combination of merchants supporting free shipping and our margins, we’ll come close to breaking even.” Currently, about 10% of orders on Shop.com include products from more than one merchant, he adds.
Shop.com channels sales for about 1,500 merchants and is adding about 80 retailers a month, Sellers says. In recent weeks, newcomers have included Circuit City, Target, Godiva Chocolatier, Buy.com and Overstock.com, he says.
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