Online Magazines are now part of E-Commerce

Online beauty magazines are trying to find new ways to generate revenue beyond advertising. (www.paidcontent.org) Publications like Lonny include buy links for featured products. Condé Nast’s Allure.com has found another creative solution – the women’s beauty magazine has teamed up with Quisidi properties Soap.com and BeautyBar.com to allow readers to buy beauty products directly through the site. This agreement is apparently the first time a woman’s magazine has partnered with an online retailer and other magazines have followed this trend. Last June, for example, MasterCard sponsored the iPad issue of Wired, allowing users to purchase the products from Amazon. These deals essentially remove the middleman involved in a customer’s purchase; rather than go through a retailer, customers can purchase items directly from the manufacturer. In class, we examined the case in which Mattel, a toy manufacturer, sells its products directly through the company’s website. As another example, one can buy P&G products like Crest toothpaste and Pampers from theEssentials.com. Now online magazines want a piece of the pie and have managed to fit into the line of purchasing steps by selling products directly from their pages. This puts retailers in an even more precarious situation.