Christmas shopping in cyberspace.

Fewer shoppers may be headed out to shopping malls this holiday season. They may be seeking to avoid heavy crowds at stores by finding their gifts in cyberspace. Experts have been saying for some time that the World Wide Web will enable people to perform an expanding array of tasks from their computers. Ronald C. Goodstein, associate professor of marketing, Indiana University, Bloomington, believes this will be the first of many Christmases where electronic commerce plays a significant role, along with catalogs and direct mail.

"People have been thinking about the Web and playing around with it. There are a lot of people who may, during this holiday season, start experimenting with it." Goodstein cites the growing number of Internet providers for business and retailers on the Web.

Research indicates that nearly half of the people who watch television ignore the commercials. Good advertising must get people's attention before selling a product. "On the Web, people are already interested. They've sought out that product category, so they're already more knowledgeable. They know what to look for or, at least, where to go. They're already prospects."

To Goodstein, successful electronic commerce allows customers to move straight to the point of building an image and attitudes about a company and its products, followed by closing the deal. He acknowledges that finding a company's Web site can be a real challenge, given the daunting number of...