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Gift cards are expected to be the top gift purchase for the fourth straight year this holiday season - 69 percent of consumers will buy them, compared to 66 percent last year, according to a recent report by Deloitte & Touche.
Consumers are also spending more on those gift cards, from an average of $139 last year to an average of $199 this year, writes Direct Magazine. However, 49 percent of consumers also say they have at least one partially or completely unused gift card - and those who do have unused gift cards have 3.7 of them.
Retailers incentives for wanting holders of gift cards to redeem them, beyond simply wanting to bring those consumers into the stores; more than half of U.S. states have laws governing what retailers can do with unredeemed gift cards, and some states require that all or some of the money be given to the government.
All sectors of the media business will suffer from the weakened economy in 2008 and 2009, with a slump in local advertising particularly hurting newspapers and local TV, according to a new projection from Goldman Sachs.
Broadcast nets will experience…
The New York Times is shuttering its International Herald Tribune site; NYTimes.com will soon host the international news normally reserved for its sister website.
The move is not about cost savings, but rather about growth, NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller…
Unilever’s Vaseline set forth on an unusual research project in a small town in Alaska. Setting up a storefront, the company began giving away free bottles of lotion and asking recipients to name the person who had recommended they come…
Meet the Press, the show hosted by Tim Russert for 17 years before his death last June, is beginning to slip in ratings.
Last month, CBS’s Face the Nation pulled ahead of Meet the Press for the first time in two…
Bloggers collectively create nearly one million blog posts each day, and half of bloggers believe blogs will be a primary source of news and entertainment in the next five years, according to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, MarketingCharts writes.…
Wal-Mart and Costco reported same-store gains in September, with sales rising 2.4% and 9% respectively. Sales at Target stores open at least a year fell 3%, writes Retailer Daily.
Below, fiscal results from the discount retail giants:
Sales of food and…
