Are e-tailers ready for St. Nick?
That’s what consumers, investors and analysts will be asking starting this week, as the official holiday shopping season gets underway. Toys “R” Us, eToys, Amazon.com, eBay, Virgin Megastore, Webvan and others will be under more pressure than ever to make sure their online stores can handle the crush of holiday traffic. The stakes are high. During the five weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, 8.6 million households will shop for items on the Internet, spending a record $4 billion, Forrester Research estimates. Many e-commerce stocks have been bid higher after a summertime lull, largely because of expectations that they can deliver the goods–literally. Dot-com advertising is at record levels, based on the companies’ hopes that they can recoup the expenditures by selling more books, CDs, apparel, food and other products–a risky proposition. Online retailers say they are ready to handle the extra business. But many analysts and consumers remain skeptical. They point to recent inci
