In an ongoing effort to understand how consumers continue to adapt to the recession, we recently asked BIGresearch to explore with consumers what “big ticket” purchases they have either put off – or may never make at all. While tighter purse strings are a given these days, the results illustrate how priorities differ across consumer [...]

I recently asked members of the Content, Member Services, and Research Committees for input on consumer research topics for the next several months.  As part of the many thoughtful suggestions these fine folks put forth, I heard several requests for up to date consumer sentiment regarding the economy.  One question in particular was, “What will [...]

In the constant push-and-pull between retailers and manufacturers, we thought it might be interesting for our next Talking With… to feature an executive from a company with both groups under the same umbrella. So we reached out to Matt Rubel, Chairman, CEO and President of Collective Brands, a company that includes both a retailer [...]

NRF has released its list of ten holiday trends to watch. Among them: Americans don’t believe the recession is over, sales and promotions are king, and gift cards still reign as the most popular gift to receive.
The most interesting trend for the online folks is likely this one:
#8: When looking at store sales, consider the [...]

The annual State of Retailing Online (SORO) Profitability, Economy & Multichannel Report has officially launched. For the final report in the SORO ’09 series, Forrester Research and Shop.org surveyed retailers about their overall results for the full year 2008, their views on the economy and how their business has fared this year, key performance [...]