Is it really possible that the comet passing through and visible through Jan. 7 at the foot of Orion is named after
the two most popular “words” of 2014 which are not words, but emojis, per my prior post?!
Hence, I will now refer to this as:
COMET 💖 😂
Let’s hope it portends, as comets do, both 💖+😂 for us all in 2015.
What a way to kick off the new year, following its green tail
“To infinity and beyond!” (sorry, couldn’t resist)
Oh my, I seem to have missed Black Friday.
That’s because Black Friday started two Tuesdays ago when my TV screen became possessed with ads for Black Friday sales before I even bought the Thanksgiving turkey. The TV medium was then overtaken by Grey Thursday ads, meaning the retailers that now open their doors on Thanksgiving Day. No matter, both grey and black shopping days are really just RED herrings BECAUSE apparently there’s a much BIGGER problem that e-commerce and m-commerce executives lose sleep over, which is:
shopping cart abandonment.
oh, the horror!
Two posts back, I mentioned that I was taking an e-commerce course (see Selfie-Ready Always!) through which this “catastrophe” was revealed. Listening to the instructor droning on about SEO and sales conversion, and then suddenly becoming full of gravitas, spit and vinegar over “shopping cart abandonment” was a little comical to me (given it was the same week the nation was gripped in Ebola paranoia.) The instructor stressed that shopping cart abandonment is a “real problem” resulting in $70 zillionbillion in lost sales annually.
Wait a minute…$70 zillionbillion in lost sales over things people didn’t want or were so uninterested in that the next distraction to come along bumped their attention?
Hmmm…let me do the math on this again…
Somebody puts something in a virtual shopping cart = $0 spent
They leave the website or app and thereby abandon the shopping cart = $0 spent
And yet…
SOMEHOW this translates in MBA math to = $70 zillionbillion in lost sales annually!
To the instructor’s credit, the only validity to this potentially lost revenue is the inadvertent pointing out of shopping addiction. Sad but true, whenever I’ve polled my Media Studies students on what makes them “tick” their first response is very often shopping.
My esteemed colleagues, Rev. Billy and Rev. Dr. Tami Coyne, who I’ve mentioned in previous posts and who both happen to be reverends, have shown me the light about the evils of consumerism as well as schooled me on shopping cart abandonment as merely the harmless online pastime also known as tantric shopping.
Therefore, in an effort to FIGHT the evils of BOTH shopping cart abandonment AND shopping addiction, I say,
ABANDON AWAY!
‘TIS THE SEASON
photos by B. McDonough
Shopping Cart by Mrs. Green’s
Black Coat by IssacMizrahiLive!
Turqouise Earmuffs by Bula
Evergreen rhinestone Sunglasses by Vera Wang
carolynartmedia 