Beyond that, however, space commerce experts are recalling that most efforts to send business into space have ended in costly disappointment.
But the chief concern for many consumers — particularly older ones — is exactly what many social commerce experts deem most important: "Sucking down social data from a customer's Facebook profile, to provide brands with a clearer customer profile," Ms. Mullen of L2 ThinkTank said.
In effect, explains John Hagel, a noted American e-commerce expert, ERP systems have replaced "fragmented unit silos with more integrated, but nonetheless restrictive enterprise silos".
"We were all surprised last year when we saw it turned out to be the biggest day of the season," said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore and an e-commerce expert.
"Purchasing may be farmed out to the very Internet exchanges that the procurement officers are being lauded for setting up," said Robert P. Derocher, an e-commerce expert at Deloitte Consulting.
Mr. Brown left Xerox in June and has created a new investment company, Twelve Entrepreneuring, with some star entrepreneurs: Halsey Minor, the chairman of Cnet; the former McKinsey & Company e-commerce expert John Hegel, and Eric Greenberg, founder of Scient.
Fresh Direct has solved a problem for this unique customer demographic, according to Sucharita Mulpuru, an e-commerce expert at consultancy firm Forrester Research, but she questions how its model would scale up for a nationwide Morrisons service with different customer needs.
To e-commerce expert, Ken Wisnefski, the gradual addition of the buy button seems desperate.
E-commerce experts said they expected the cutthroat price competition to be fatal to some struggling retailers.
To maximize your chances of getting the best price year-round, shop on Tuesday, a variety of e-commerce experts say.
Whatever the explanation for the difficulty of some retailing Web sites to attract Canadian spenders, e-commerce experts in the United States do not expect the trend to creep southward.
