Google Retail is Coming to Shop.org Annual Summit!

If you or your company will be attending next week's Shop.org Annual Summit, we would love to see you there! Google will be speaking at the following sessions, and we encourage you to join us and continue our dialogue on this blog forum there.

1. Online to Store Roundtable: Ways to Successfully Quantify Online Media Investment on In-Store Sales
Tuesday 9/22/09, 4:15 - 4:45 PM PT (Table #3 in Islander F)
Moderated by: Michael Feldman, Manager of Strategic Initiatives at Google, and Jeff Haddox, Direct Marketing Analyst at Pier 1 Imports

As consumers increasingly go online to research and shop, helping to grow online-influenced retail sales, the majority of sales today continue to come from brick-and-mortar stores. Our roundtable discussion highlights the critical need for multi-channel retailers to quantify the impact of online media investment on in-store sales. We will review a Google case study with Pier 1 Imports, who successfully ran geographically-targeted test and control experiments and saw a 300% return on their online investment; we will share best practices and recommendations on how retailers can attribute their online presence to in-store bottom line.

2. Growing Pains: Is Profitable Global eCommerce Expansion a Myth or Reality
Wednesday 9/23/09, 3:00 PM PT (Track #3 in Islander H)
Moderated by: Jim Okamura, Senior Partner at J.C. Williams Group

Chris O'Neill, our Retail Director at Google, will be giving an introduction to this session led by Jim Okamura from the J.C. Williams Group. Chris will offer his perspectives on global expansion and digital media and share some of our experiences from working globally. Chris will also highlight specific product innovations that will be relevant as businesses move towards globalization in a relatively "flat world." Full description of the rest of the session can be found here.

Posted by Julia Tang, the Google Retail Team