Retail Marketing - Shopping Center Marketing

It’s one of the largest manufacturers of consumer electronics, but Panasonic Corp. of North America still walks a fine line as an Internet retailer.

Having invested several years and millions of dollars in an e-commerce operation, Panasonic wants to maximize revenue by selling its base of more than 2,000 products direct to the public over the Internet. But the company also wants to avoid alienating its retailers, which include some of the biggest chains in the business.

To achieve both its goals, Panasonic, No. 160 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, is expanding a pilot program with Shopatron Inc., a third-party service that funnels orders from manufacturers’ web sites to retailers and dealers.

During the pilot, about 30% of web orders on Panasonic.com are going through Shopatron, but eventually that number could rise as high as 100%, says Panasonic vice president of e-business Jeremy Dalnes. “Once those types of orders are able to be processed by our retailers, we’ll open it up so that almost 100% of our orders to the public will be fulfilled by our retailers,” he says.

[Full Story at Internet Retailer]