Retail Giant Westfield Plans a Cyber Mall

Last week, retail giant Westfield announced they are preparing to enter into Australia's online retail market, after turning their back on the Internet 10 years ago.

I don't think online shoppers like myself are surprised to read this. It's another big business buckling on an old promise that they would never enter the online shopping market. Perhaps these big retail giants thought the Internet would go away years ago, or perhaps they hoped it would.

Westfield chairman Frank Lowy revealed the firm was preparing to return to the Internet, and was believed to have been playing down the situation. Apparently sources close to the virtual shopping mall project say the virtual shopping mall is one of the biggest software development projects in the southern hemisphere, sucking up most of the Australian IT industries supply of Ruby software developers.

Ebay has been driving this online shopping mall platform for some time with eBay power sellers. In a report made last week in The Australian, an eBay spokesman conceded the company recently had introduced new pricing and services aimed toward the large retailers, and is part of long-term plans.

"We're going to continue to concentrate on our strategy of differentiating between what eBay has been known for in the past, which is consumer sellers, but what we're much more about these days, which is a more retail-like experience." the spokesman said.

Selling their digital retail ideas to the large retailers could be difficult for both eBay and Westfield. These plans might be great for some smaller retailers, but the most popular retailers that Westfield and Ebay need to succeed, already have an online presence.

In any case, I think Westfield is really going to need a blockbuster website to succeed. And in my opinion, nothing less than a combined delivery between shops would move me from the gamut of bookmarks and accounts I already have.

The Internet already is a shopping mall.