Consumer Electronics

New York -- Amazon.com is the most popular U.S. online retail site when it comes to having web content shared on Pinterest, the pin-board style social network, in the run up to Christmas 2013. The findings come from a study by digital marketing software and services specialist Searchmetrics.

In a study of ten top U.S. retail sites, images and pages from Amazon.com are being shared most frequently on Pinterest, with Walmart and Apple taking second and third positions respectively.

Reston, Va. -- For the holiday season-to-date, $31.5 billion has been spent online, marking a 9% increase versus the corresponding days last year, according to comScore. However, as noted in previous releases, Thanksgiving Day was six days later this year than last and causes more heavy spending days to fall in the year ago period, thereby diluting growth rates at this point.

Green Monday (Dec. 9) saw $1.4 billion in desktop online spending, up 10% versus year ago, representing the third heaviest online spending day of the holiday season-to-date.

Sport Chalet kicked off the holidays with strong Black Friday weekend and Cyber Monday sales figures and anticipates further growth for the duration of the shopping season.

Black Friday weekend comparable sales were up 17.1% compared to 2012, and Cyber Monday comparable sales increased by 34.8%.

Analysis from price intelligence firm Profitero showed that Amazon.com makes more than 2.5 million price changes every day, compared with a little more than 50,000 total price changes made by brick-and-mortar retailers Walmart and Best Buy throughout November.

Profitero’s analysis also revealed that Amazon.com has increased its number of daily price changes 10-fold during the last 12 months. At the beginning of December 2012, the online retailer implemented just 269,113 price changes.

RadioShack has completed a new financing totaling $835 million. That figure includes a $535 million credit facility led by GE Capital, Corporate Retail Finance and a $250 million secured term loan led by Salus Capital Partners.  

Houston — Jones Lang LaSalle’s Capital Markets group has closed the sale of Northwest Crossing Centre, a 179,469-sq.-ft., fully leased shopping center in Houston. USA Properties purchased the property from Weingarten Realty. JLL secured 10-year, fixed-rate financing for the acquisition.

Boston -- Target was the most-browsed mobile app/site in 2013, and Apple’s mobile app/site is where consumers purchase the most, according to a new study from Mobiquity.

Discount online shopping retailer Overstock.com has added prescription brand-name glasses and sunglasses to its website.

"Adding prescription eyewear to the Overstock website, with great names at great prices, seemed a natural fit," states Overstock.com chairman and CEO Patrick M. Byrne. "Unbeatable prices, fashionable styles, ease of ordering, stellar customer service, made the whole concept work for us and for our customers."