Increasingly, shoppers go to stores, then to Internet

Don’t call brick-and-mortar retail stores irrelevant in this age of e-commerce: In a survey, 69 percent of U.S. online shoppers admit to browsing in traditional stores before buying over the Internet.

That’s an increase from 53 percent in a similar study in 2000.

Two-thirds of online shoppers say they now buy over the Internet some of the things they used to get in store visits. Yet the percentage getting information or shopping online prior to visiting a regular store remains steady at 75 percent.

“We do see more and more displacement from retail stores, … but it’s absolutely not the death of the retail store,” said Jeff Cole, who directed the study at the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future.

Americans remain concerned about the privacy of personal information when they shop online, but the intensity of such concerns has decreased. Those “very” or “extremely” concerned decreased, while the “somewhat” concerned group jumped.

The study, the fourth in an annual series conducted until this year at UCLA, was based on random telephone interviews with 2,009 households from July to September 2003. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Baseball parks the next hotspot

Peanuts, hot dogs and wireless instant replays. It’s the future of baseball.

SBC Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, is already a giant wireless hotspot. Next season, the team plans to offer Wi-Fi users instant replays on demand, possibly even of different angles on controversial plays.

“We’re charting new territory here so it’s really going to be up to what our fans want,” said Bill Schlough, vice president and chief information officer of the Giants.

Since the ballpark launched its wireless network in April, the first major sports venue to do so, a few hundred spectators per game have brought along their laptops or handheld computers to use the free service, Schlough said.

They’re logging on to check e-mail and visit a customized Web site that offers live streaming video of other baseball games, stats and historical footage.

In addition to instant replays, the Giants plan to add a wireless feature so fans can order food online for delivery right to their seats.

Apple pie, anyone?

Rival browsers see gains

This summer’s security troubles with Microsoft Corp.’s Web browser has benefited rivals, namely Netscape, Firefox and other browsers based on Mozilla.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer saw only a dent in its market share — to 93.7 percent as of Sept. 17, from 95.5 percent on June 4, according to WebSideStory, a Web analytics firm.

But because the share of other browsers was low to begin with, their increase was more significant.

The share for Mozilla browsers jumped to 5.28 percent, compared with 3.54 percent in June. Mozilla says downloads doubled in late June and early July at the height of the security troubles.