By Alissa Arford-Leyl
Shop Site of the Month
Bouchard Automotive, Inc. - North Haven, Conn.
www.bouchardauto.com
This site has professional graphics, good information and
an innovative design.
Web Wise
Y2K and Beyond
The year 2000 is here, and hopefully all is well. According to a November 1999 poll by The Gallup Organization, 23 percent of Americans said they planned to stockpile food to protect themselves from possible Y2K computer problems. Fifty-one percent of Americans at that time had no Y2K precautionary plans in mind.
The Y2K scare had companies postponing projects and diverting many resources to make sure they were Y2K compatible. Now, those resources can be used for new projects and this year should be a year of great advancement in the computer industry.
Look for continued growth in the major Web companies like Amazon. com and eBay (http://www.ebay. com). Many start-up Web companies may fail to make their mark and be bought up by their more successful counterparts.
More consumers will be shopping, banking and conducting research online this year. More than 80 percent of U.S. consumers polled in a recent survey by Frederick Schneiders rate their online banking experience higher than their traditional brick-and-mortar banking experience. The survey also reveals that 13 percent of respondents do all their banking online.
Online shopping during the holiday season was estimated at anywhere from $4 billion (Forrester Research Inc.) to $15 billion (Ernst & Young). There is a scarcity of actual online sales numbers because companies that have physical stores are not required to report their Web sales. The U.S. Commerce Department recently started asking retailers to include online sales in their reports and plans to release online shopping numbers for the fourth quarter of 1999 in the spring of 2000.
ASA Web Ways
Members Only
Have you visited the Members Only Area of the ASA Web site lately? Use your six-digit ASA member number as name and password to enter the section.
Make the This Just In section your first stop and then be sure to check out the state legislation affecting the automotive service industry which is updated each week. You can conduct research in the Information Center by searching through thousands of abstracts on automotive and business topics. The Official Notification of Candidates for the ASA National Board of Directors for 2000 is online for your convenience. The electronic voting line will officially open on Jan. 10, 2000. Join the ASA News-Network to get the latest association and industry news delivered to your e-mail address.
Note: Web sites listed in Net Worth do not serve as endorsements of the sites themselves or of any companies or products associated with these sites. In addition, ASA does not verify the factual accuracy and does not necessarily share the opinions expressed by those within these other sites.
Copyright (c) 1996-2008. Automotive Service Association. All rights reserved.
