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Consumer-direct retailer of musical instruments and gear Musician`s Friend Inc. is beefing up its information technology and e-commerce expertise with the addition of Charles Hunsinger as executive vice president of I.T., and Mark Deruyter as senior manager of customer acquisition. Previously Hunsinger was chief information officer of Corporate Express US. Deruyter is building a team to manage all advertising channels for Musician’s Friend. He previously was with Microsoft Corp.’s online shopping mall MSN Shopping as program manager. Read the full article

The retailer has joined Wal-Mart and Amazon in the online book price wars, disclosing it is slashing the prices of seven highly anticipated hardcover books available for pre-order on its Web site, matching the $8.99 price that Walmart announced. Wal-Mart promptly responded lowering its price to $8.98. The publishing industry is watching warily to see if the price war will have lasting impact on book pricing and the contracts that publishers sign with authors. What is still unclear is whether this is a short-term promotion on Walmart’s part, or whether Walmart.com intends to use cheap books to challenge Amazon as the Web’s leading retailer. Read the full article

The Direct Marketing Association has updated its ethical guidelines to incorporate the online behavioral targeting principles announced this summer by a consortium of industry groups. Essentially, the industry-wide principles call on companies to notify consumers about behavioral targeting and allow them to opt out of it. While the new guidelines are similar to standards developed around 10 years ago by the Network Advertising Initiative, they are potentially more far-reaching because the task force members represent over 5,000 companies. The DMA’s move comes as U.S. lawmakers are drafting privacy legislation that could regulate online behavioral targeting. Read the full article at MediaPost

Google believes it has a solution for marketers looking to measure display ad impact and it believes the solution will help Google grab a big chunk of the $4.7 billion display ad business. Called ‘Campaign Insights,’ the system has been in beta for the past year. Now it’s ready for prime time. Ultimately, like Google Analytics, it will be offered to all of Google’s display advertisers for free. With Campaign Insights, Google takes data from the advertiser’s server logs to determine who was shown an ad and when. Then it compares that to web searches and site visits culled from data from the millions of Google toolbars on computer desktops. Those results are compared to a comparable group that didn’t see the ad. Then Google measures the difference between the number of brand searches and site visits between the two groups. Read the full article

Unica has unveiled one Web-page tag that combines analytics, email marketing, personalization and behavioral targeting and testing into one application. It feeds data through one interface into a dashboard that lets clients analyze and customize content on the fly. Unica promises that marketers who use its Interactive Marketing OnDemand solution can “segment visitors based on recent activity or interest, and create and execute targeted promotions such as designing an email or personalizing a Web page based on the person’s online behavior.” Read the full article

Behavioral analytics provider Quantivo debuted a service designed to help marketers -- along with Web and business analysts -- more effectively segment and target customers based on a complete and expanded view of their behaviors. Quantivo Enrich attempts to give clients a more comprehensive view of customer behaviors by connecting multichannel actions, and by closing gaps in -- and adding important business metrics to -- their original data. Read the full article

Retailers may need to rethink their strategy if any of them are counting on window shoppers to give them that coveted bump in holiday-season sales. After the 2008 holiday season’s whopping 15% decline in store traffic, shopper visits for the industry’s biggest selling period this year are expected to decline another 4.2%, according to a survey by ShopperTrak, an industry tracker. Discounters led by Wal-Mart may again be the winners this year, outpacing department stores such as Macy’s or clothing stores led by Gap Inc. According to an NRF survey, 70% of shoppers plan to buy at discount stores this year, about the same as last year. With frugality being the new fashion, pricing and discounts are likely to be the key factor this year for more shoppers, with 43.3% of them, up from 40% a year ago, citing that as the most important consideration in making a purchase. Less important is customer service, quality of merchandise or location convenience, the survey shows. Read the full article

Analysts believe the current price war over hot coming books is just the tip of the iceberg in the conflict between the two retail giants. In recent months, the two companies have increasingly copied each other’s playbooks online and are treading more on each other’s turf. Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez said in an interview that Wal-Mart would continue targeting rivals such as Amazon with other hard discount promotions this holiday season. “We intend to establish the price leadership we have in stores in the online world,” he said. The latest battle for market share between Wal-Mart.com and Amazon is Wal-Mart’s move to offer discounted shipping (97-cents) on many products. And Wal-Mart believes it has the advantage over Amazon by have brick-n-mortar stores, offering customers the ability to look online to see if their local Wal-Mart is stocking what they want. Read the full article

How do you rejigger an $8 billion company to catch up to rising customer-experience expectations that have passed it by? That’s the task facing eBay. Unlike Zappos, which built a name using customer service as marketing, and Amazon, where shoppers can log on and find virtually anything at a clear, set price, eBay didn’t control the fulfillment chain. That often leaves its customer service, a component key to branding, at the mercy of its sellers. The company’s marketplace unit - which includes eBay.com – is the focal point of the company’s turnaround efforts. Morningstar analyst Larry Witt doubts eBay can make a go of it against Zappos and Amazon noting “They can’t directly control the customer experience, though they can influence it.” Yet that’s exactly what eBay has set out to do. As such eBay is working to improve services for top buyers and sellers and has hired talent to improve its search and technology capabilities. Read the full article at Ad Age

The multichannel gift retailer has named Ronald Boire president and CEO. Boire joins Brookstone from Toys ‘R’ Us, where he was president, North America, and at one time head of ToysRUs.com. Boire will also join the Brookstone board. Read the full article