December 22, 2009 – 1:19 pm
by Nissa Hanna I’m not sure how it happened, but gifts for myself found their way into my shopping bags this holiday season. I checked my list twice and, nope, personal presents were nowhere to be found; but somehow I walked away with a few things that would bypass the tree and go straight to [...]
December 21, 2009 – 6:17 am
by Nissa Hanna WHAT’S HAPPENING A recent survey conducted in Britain by iForce found that shipping options are complicating online shopping. The Delivery Options survey looked at 70 top e-retailers and learned that less than 10% let shoppers choose to receive their packages in either the morning or evening (InternetRetailing.net 12.1.09). Shipping cost clarity is [...]
December 1, 2009 – 10:53 am
by Hans Eisenbeis The last place you’ll find me on the day after Thanksgiving is the mall. I understand why retailers want to jump-start holiday spending with deep discounts and boughs of holly, but I’m not that into competitive shopping. So you’d think I’d be happy with “Christmas Creep,” the slowly expanding holiday season that [...]
November 27, 2009 – 7:47 am
by Nissa Hanna WHAT’S HAPPENING At Rite Aid, shopping has healthy benefits. The retailer is testing a rewards program that compensates consumers with free health screenings in addition to traditional discounts (BuffaloNews.com 11.3.09). The “Wellness+” program lets shoppers earn points for their purchases to redeem for glucose or cholesterol readings. The screenings take place in [...]
November 18, 2009 – 9:27 am
by Sean Captain WHAT’S HAPPENING A New Yorker purporting to be the “world’s fastest nudist” flashed across computer screens in about a dozen YouTube videos. The story was picked up by blogs Gothamist, Gawker, and the Huffington Post as well as CNN’s Anderson Cooper. The media had egg on their faces when it turned out [...]
November 5, 2009 – 6:00 am
by Nissa Hanna WHAT’S HAPPENING While self-gifting is all fine and good, it usually lacks one key element of gift giving: surprise. A new service, Surprise Gift For Me, is offering to be a personal wish list shopper so self-gifters can be pleasantly taken aback by their own presents. Here’s how it works: The giver/receiver [...]
October 12, 2009 – 6:00 am
by Kristen Acimovic WHAT’S HAPPENING Not every shopping center is a shadow of its former self. Ethnic malls — targeted retail communities that cater to specific ethnicities and cultural communities — are bucking economic trends and thriving despite the downturn. Bustling bazaars like Seattle’s Great Wall Mall, which delivers an authentic Pan-Asian experience, and Fort [...]
October 6, 2009 – 4:02 pm
Consumer strategists Barbie Casasus and Nissa Hanna break down Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2010 and consumers’ changing mind-set toward fashion in a down economic climate. Download the podcast here: How did Fashion Week fare? 14 min., 28 sec.
September 4, 2009 – 6:00 am
by Reed Robinson WHAT’S HAPPENING Hidden fees, unpleasant side effects and dubious ingredients are safe no more thanks to the fine-print watchdogs at Mouse Print. The site offers explanations of hundreds of product offers, promotions and packages in plain English, in an attempt to expose suspect offers on deals that are often too good to [...]
by Stefania Revelli Last week I made a decision: My partying days are over. At the risk of sounding like a total Debbie Downer, let me clarify. In the last six months, I’ve been invited to at least a dozen parties, but not the birthday kind. The I-started-my-own-biz-so-come-see-and-socialize-with-no-pressure-to-purchase kind, with products ranging from jewelry, clothing [...]
by Nissa Hanna WHAT’S HAPPENING Watch out, single-line barcodes; GS1 DataBars will soon hit store shelves to help customers save money and prevent them from purchasing expired goods. The torqued DataBars pack extra info into two lines of barcodes, so stores can offer coupons with multiple product discounts. For example, one coupon could offer deals [...]
by Nissa Hanna Like many Millennial and Xer consumers, I’m an eclectic sartorial shopper, mixing mostly moderate-priced pieces with fast fashions. I’ve come to accept that aside from the occasional splurge in a high-end store, I’m just not paying enough to get good customer service. But a recent encounter at apparel store Martin + Osa [...]
by Tim Barlow WHAT’S HAPPENING From frozen meats to breakfast cereal, cost-conscious shoppers are bidding on heavily discounted items at grocery auctions, with average savings of between 50-90% (ABCnews.com 4.2.09). Sprouting up at auction halls across the country, the gatherings put leftover and slightly damaged groceries on the auction block. Arriving from supermarkets, distribution centers [...]
By Iconoculture
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Also posted in Consumer Trend, Food/Beverage, Grocery
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Tagged Boomers, Consumer trends, Gen Xers, grocery stores, Iconoculture, Iconowatch, Matures, Millennials, Tim Barlow
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by Nissa Hanna WHAT’S HAPPENING Shoppers don’t have to spend time searching for low-cost prescriptions; beta site MedTipster can now do it for them. To find affordable meds, any consumer can enter her zip code, prescription and dosage, then the start-up site provides a list of local drugstores that sell the Rx — or its generic [...]
