Trends
Global branding, design and consumer trend observations from In-a-Nutshell
Book wars 4
According to Brandchannel, the bookstore chain Borders could be on the brink of bankruptcy.
Borders has stubbornly held on to its bricks-and-mortar sales model, even as competitors like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have aggressively expanded online and moved into the e-book marketplace. It has struggled for years and was expected to file for bankruptcy a year ago. Now, it faces a similar situation as a critical loan becomes due.
Wednesday, 31 March 2010 07:32
New frugality is here to stay
After two consecutive years of declining per capita consumption, a new frugality has become the dominant mind-set among consumers in the United States - and probably in other wealthy countries as well - according to a recent article by consultancy Booz & Company.
Frugal behaviours, such as reducing or deferring consumption, trading down to lower price points, purchasing private label brands, and shopping at discount outlets, are hardening into habits.
Booz & Company found that although all consumers are more frugal and value-driven today, there is a significant degree of variation in their definitions of value. These variations reflect different approaches to spending categories, price sensitivity, brand loyalty, methods for researching products, and shopping preferences. The old consumer segments, based on demographic factors such as age and ethnic background, no longer seem as apt in distinguishing consumer behaviour. It identifies six statistically significant consumer segments.
Thursday, 25 March 2010 09:02
Why you should not drink bottled water:
More from Online Education:
- The price of bottled water is up to 10,000 times the cost of tap water
- 40% of bottled water is taken from municipal water sources, a.k.a. tap water
- 22% of tested bottled water brands contained chemical contaminant levels above strict US state health limits
- 17 million barrels of oil are used in the production of water bottles each year – enough to fuel a million cars
- It takes three times as much water to produce the bottles as it does to fill it
- Only 1 in 5 water bottles are recycled – the other 4 contribute to the 3 billion lbs of waste from plastic water bottles
Thursday, 25 March 2010 08:57
The internet is big
These facts came from Online Education, a website for “the stuff they don’t teach you in college” (one look and you’ll be hooked!):
- The number of internet users has jumped from 350 million to 1.7 billion in the last decade
- 1 trillion (1,000 000,000,000) web pages have been created
- 13 million Wikipedia articles written
- 8 billion songs have been purchased and downloaded (but 160 billion were pirated)
More internet facts:
Thursday, 25 March 2010 08:49
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