Wired (August 5)
Despite “growing support from both consumers and retailers to move away from cash in favor of digital payment options,” there are dangers. Roughly a quarter of U.S. consumers have no access or limited access to credit, debit and other cashless options. “Brands need to consider inclusive commerce a core part of their overall customer experience. Cash may no longer be king, but its place in the retail landscape will remain for decades to come.”
Reuters (June 28)
“British consumers have turned gloomier about the economy and the outlook for their personal finances,” according to a consumer-sentiment survey. “The GfK consumer sentiment index—which has been negative since shortly before the June 2016 Brexit referendum—fell to -13 in June from May’s seven-month high of -10.” This is just one of the signs pointing to “a lacklustre second quarter for the economy.”
Tags: Brexit, Consumer sentiment, Consumers, Economy, GfK, Gloomier, Lacklustre, Negative, Outlook, Personal finances, Referendum, UK
Los Angeles Times (April 27)
“BPA and BPS lurk in products all around us, notably in plastics, and research has shown that most people have trace amounts in their bodies. But that the millions of paper receipts consumers handle every day might be another—and significant—source of exposure is not well known.” This is one of the reasons California may get behind legislation to ban large retailers and banks from offering paper receipts by 2022.
Tags: Ban, Bank, BPA, BPS, California, Consumers, Exposure, Legislation, Paper receipts, Plastics, Retailers
WARC (March 5)
“The vexed issue of ad frequency…has become more problematic with the proliferation of channels, shorter attention spans and active ad avoidance by consumers.” While overcoming ad-avoidance remains a challenge, there is clearly “a cost to excessive frequency.”
Tags: Ad avoidance, Ad frequency, Attention spans, Channels, Consumers, Problematic, Proliferation, Vexed
Bloomberg (September 19)
“Trump has badly miscalculated Xi’s willingness to endure a lot of economic suffering to avoid surrender. Trump has also miscalculated who will be hurt by his tariffs; in many cases it will be American consumers and companies.”
Tags: Companies, Consumers, Endure, Miscalculated, Suffering, Surrender, Tariffs, Trump, U.S., Willingness, Xi
BBC (August 23)
Brexit is “akin to attempting to remove an egg from an omelette” and if there’s not a deal, it’s likely to become an even bigger mess. “Today’s “no deal” papers reveal the complicated exercise could carry significant costs for consumers and businesses if Britain and the EU fail to agree on a transition period and a subsequent trading agreement.” Failure to reach a deal would “very likely to have a negative impact on the economy and could mean higher prices in the shops as firms pass on the higher costs of doing business.”
Tags: Brexit, Businesses, Complicated, Consumers, Costs, Economy, EU, Failure, No-deal, Prices, Transition, UK
New York Times (June 20)
“The United States should stop the scattershot, pointless nonsense on tariffs and go the other way, and hard: It should drop all tariffs, even if the rest of the world doesn’t follow.” Economists have long “understood that free trade is the best policy. Studies show that countries with freer trade have both higher per-capita incomes and faster rates of productivity growth. Economists have also long understood that barriers to trade, while pitched as a way to help domestic workers, always heavily penalize domestic consumers.”
Tags: Barriers, Consumers, Economists, Free trade, Growth, Nonsense, Per-capita income, Productivity, Scattershot, Tariffs, United States, Workers
Washington Post (June 8)
“Trump is waging a trade war in the dumbest way possible.” In the best of times, “trade wars are neither good nor easy to win…. Every side loses, experiencing lost jobs, crippled businesses and higher prices for consumers.” Trumps tariffs are now estimated to result in 16 lost U.S. jobs for every job gained in the aluminum/steel industry: a painful, self-inflicted wound. Moreover, the counterpunches of our trading partners “are likely to draw more blood.” With the “already announced $40 billion worth of retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-made products,” Canada, the EU, Mexico, Russia, India, Japan and Turkey have “fine-tuned the art of minimizing their own pain — and maximizing ours.”
Tags: Aluminum. Steel, Businesses, Canada, Consumers, Counterpunches, Dumbest, EU, India, Japan, Lost jobs, Mexico, Prices, Russia, Tariffs, Trade war, Trading partners, Trump, Turkey, U.S.
LA Times (May 26)
“Up until just a few weeks ago, China was the single largest market for the world’s recyclables. About two-thirds of the yogurt cups, soda bottles and magazines tucked into curbside recycling bins and crushed into bales were loaded onto cargo ships bound for China…where they were remanufactured into shiny new products and shipped back to the U.S.” China precipitated a crisis, when it halted all imports of recyclables in May. “The U.S. and other nations are still scrambling to figure out what to do with the rapidly growing trash bottleneck,” but China has actually done everyone a favor by creating a sense of urgency. “Policymakers and consumers should step up and take the hard but necessary steps to deal with our out-of-control trash-generating culture.”
Tags: Bottles, China, Consumers, Crisis, Culture, Curbside recycling, Imports, Magazines, Policymakers, Recyclables, Remanufactured, Trash bottleneck, U.S., Urgency, Yogurt cups
WARC (March 5)
Just 2% of UK consumers say they trust marketing and advertising companies with their personal information, according to a recent survey which also suggests people seem resigned to the issue of data privacy being out of their control.
Tags: Advertising, Consumers, Data privacy, Marketing, Personal information, Trust, UK
