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Retailers, beware of the grumpy shopper and be especially careful when sizing up your customers or you risk losing a sale. A new study finds that cheerful shoppers prefer peppy salespeople, but cranky customers spend more money with someone who mirrors their own mood.

I give you this bit of psychology because if you can click a mouse, you can get help with your online retail shopping these days. New technology is quickly changing the face of online shopping! It's time to face the inevitable — niche marketing on the Internet has come of age for the consumer. Try as I might, I can no longer avoid the frequent email promotions containing offers to buy pots and pans, blenders, coffeemakers, and a huge assortment of culinary tools — and this is just the beginning. So I hesitantly went to Google and plunged in. My foray into the world of gourmet housewares help sites left me stunned as I discovered new resources that help online customers shop smarter. There is so much more data available for shoppers and plenty of pictures, too.

The big changes are the introduction of two new shopping services, Mpire.com and Slide.com. What's new about them? First of all, they're different from comparison shopping sites like Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com and Pricegrabber.com. Mpire allows shoppers to view the most recent selling prices of millions of items, based on data from eBay, then compare prices and other attributes on items selling on a handful of major sites like Overstock.com, eBay.com, Craigslist.com and Amazon.com. For example, someone searching for a 10-piece Calphalon cookware set would see the average price shoppers paid for the item last month and also the average shipping price. Mpire also displays a graph of the average prices paid in each of the previous 30 days.
How does Mpire earn its money? It comes from merchants who pay the site 10 to 20 cents every time someone clicks on their link. Mpire's price data sets it apart from other sites in the market. I found Mpire to be one of the most interesting companies in the Web 2.0 shopping space, which has been surprisingly sparse. I've seen many sites that help people share information about goods, but what most new sites lack is that kind of Web 1.0 element of using technology to scour the marketplace.

Slide.com, by contrast, seeks to bring the shopping experience directly to the user's computer rather than directing users to a particular Web site. It began as a photo sharing site that allowed users to present continuous photo slide shows on their computer screens. This is a shopping service in which users sign up to see slide shows of products they are interested in buying.

Sites that distribute merchandise on Slide, Mpire and others say the new services are an important avenue for growth. How a retailer grows a business can be accelerated by each sale generated by an affiliate site, and it's also a good source for generating more leads. Amazon, eBay and others have opened much of their technology to outside companies like Mpire and Slide, so these new companies can more easily transfer pricing data, photos, product descriptions and other information directly to their sites. Web sites in the past used to be much more secretive about how their technologies worked. Now, as long as the user is coming back to the site or somehow the site is gaining an economic benefit, there's very little downside risk.

Your Site Audience
I'm often asked, "How can I get a younger demographic to visit my Web site?" My standard answer is usually, "Do you really know your audience?" The old adage "Know your audience" has taken on new meaning. Not only do you have to know who you are talking to, you need to know how they listen. There was a recent article in the Sloan Management Review that stated, "Each audience member will emphasize one of four primary focuses — data, structure, vision and the human element." Listeners or site visitors who are primarily data driven will be evaluating your presentation to see if it is grounded in the appropriate facts and figures. Audience members who look first for structure want to see how all the different aspects of your presentation fit together. "Where are all these strategy discussions going to lead us?" is what the people who are listening for vision want to know. And finally, people who focus on the human dimension want to know where they — and everyone else — fit in.

What is the key to success? I believe it's to always assume all four types of listeners are present in every audience. Identify your default mode and leverage those skills as much as you can, but address the needs of the other types of listeners as well.

I recently read in Worth magazine that in both 2004 and 2005, the stock prices of companies with high morale — those in which at least 70 percent of the workers expressed overall satisfaction with their organizations — outperformed similar companies in the same industry by a ratio of 2.5-to-1. What makes an employee enthusiastic — fair treatment as illustrated by: 1) Equitable wages, 2) Benefits, 3) A sense of achievement or pride in one's job performance and company, and 4) Camaraderie among co-workers.

The conclusion to be drawn from the findings could not be clearer. The happiness of business owners may be more dependent on how happy their employees are than they realize.

HOT NEW SHOPPING SERVICES
Mpire.com
Slide.com

COMPARISON SHOPPING SITES
Shopping.com
Shopzilla.com
Pricegrabber.com

MAJOR WEB SITES
Overstock.com
eBay.com
Amazon.com

Marshall Marcovitz is the founder and former CEO of the CHEF'S Catalog, a leading Internet shopping site. Currently, he is a lecturer, a university professor and a marketing consultant. He can be contacted at mmmellow9@yahoo.com.