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Brands See Boost in Recall, Likability, Search Queries with Olympics Buy
NBC is saying that brands that advertised during last Friday’s telecast of the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics reaped big benefits from their advertising dollars.NBC commissioned research from Google, which showed huge spikes in search queries for brands that were featured during the night, according to Brandweek. The opening ceremony drew the largest number of...Continue Reading »
Drop in E-Commerce Customer Satisfaction Ends Three Year Climb
Customer satisfaction with the e-commerce sector fell for the first time in three years, dropping 2% to a score of 80 on a 100-point scale, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The decline was driven by a dramatic plunge in customer satisfaction with online brokerages, which were hit hard by the fallout from the financial crisis that erased billions of dollars of...Continue Reading »
Bloomberg: Upcoming Gov’t Reports Will Show Less-Than-Rosy Economy
This week several reports from government agencies are likely to paint a gray picture of the state of the US economy, Bloomberg writes. Some of the probable results, according to the median forecasts of Bloomberg News surveys:
US consumer prices probably posted their first annual decline since 1955. The "excess economic slack" is causing the deceleration in prices ("disinflation"),...Continue Reading »
Shopping Habits of US Hispanics Differ from Those of US Adults Overall
US Hispanic consumers differ from the average among US adult shoppers in their buying behaviors and preferences, according to Experian Consumer Research, which has been surveying the Hispanic population since 2003. The US Hispanic population, has been growing steadily and has become an important consumer population, having grown 20% over the past four years (spring 2004 to spring...Continue Reading »
How Consumers Spent in Previous Recessions
Retailers can anticipate the performance of their businesses in a recession--to some degree, at least, according to the McKinsey Quarterly. During the 1990-91 and 2001-02 downturns, US consumers reprioritized their spending rather than cutting it across the board, McKinsey research found.
Spending dropped in discretionary categories such as dining out, personal care products, and...Continue Reading »
Retailers’ Balance Sheets Tell All
As holiday season sales results come rolling in, analysts stipulate that the downturn in sales may push even more retailers into bankruptcy court. But sales trends are not the only measure of a retailer's health, Barron's writes. To distinguish the companies with promise from those that are truly in danger of going under, it examined other factors on the corporate balance sheet, like...Continue Reading »
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Mall Owners Seek to Escape Debt
It was a bad day for mall owners: On Monday, Developers Diversified Realty Corp.--owner and manager of more than 700 shopping centers--failed to seal a deal that would sell 13 assets to an institutional investor for $890 million, Reuters reports. Also on Monday, General Growth Properties announced that it had not yet reached an agreement to further extend the maturity date on $900...Continue Reading »
Consumer Survey: Personal Finance WOM Influencers Small Group with Big Clout
In word-of-mouth communications regarding personal finance, 11.5% of the US adult population are key influencers, online and offline, according to a new survey from Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI). This segment of approximately 25.4 million adults mirrors the typical American adult in terms of age and income: Dubbed "Big Circle Influentials" because of their relatively large...Continue Reading »
UK to Cut VAT 2.5 Percentage Points
To stimulate consumer spending and give retail a chance in the coming year, the British government has implemented a temporary cut to the value-added tax (VAT)--the equivalent of a national sales tax (because it gets passed along to consumers)--reports Alibaba.com.The VAT will go down to 15% from its previous 17.5% rate for a period of 13 months, starting Dec. 1, UK Chancellor of the...Continue Reading »
Restaurants, Green Products Big Losers as Pessimistic Consumers Cut Back
Some 58% of Americans say the economy has reached a low point - and nearly half (47%) think it will stay this way for a while, prompting spending cutbacks on nearly everything, from charitable contributions to dining out to beauty and grooming products, according to the November/December 2008 Insight Report from MarketTools, Inc.The report, which focuses on US economic conditions and how...Continue Reading »