Research

Consumers aren’t the only ones who get wrapped up in the spirit of spending around the holidays. At a time when consumers are at their most generous, advertisers are upping their games and spending big to engage with consumers looking for the perfect gift and to share good tidings. Whether through images of cute polar bears sipping soft drinks or wise-cracking chocolate-covered candy, advertisers spent nearly $2.5 billion across the tech, clothing, gaming, book, kitchen, sporting goods and jewelry segments last year, up from $2 billion five years ago.

The country’s fastest-growing ethnic segment also may be its most misunderstood, particularly by design and construction brands. “The Arrival of Hispanic-American Homeowners” white paper details buying power and purchasing habits of this emergent demographic for home and building product manufacturers.

The problem with brand value is really simple: no one agrees on it.  By Randall Beard, Global Head, Advertiser Solutions – Nielsen

Horowitz Associates, Inc., Market and Multicultural Research has rebranded as Horowitz Research. In addition to the more streamlined name, the firm has unveiled a new visual identity and tagline: “Research. Insight. Innovation.”

Optimism about the economy is kindling holiday cheer as shoppers plan to spend more this year and tech-savvy shoppers have even higher spending expectations, according to Deloitte’s 29th annual holiday survey.

Marketing technology adoption will continue to grow next year, and thanks to the massive amount of data marketers now have, tools focused on making sense of all the figures are of particular interest.

A new national survey exploring how African Americans and Hispanics get their news reveals that the predicted digital divide, in which people of color would be left behind in the use of technology, is not playing out as many of those forecasting the digital future anticipated. The survey findings suggest a divide based on content, not technology.

Mobile has now eclipsed desktop as a research tool with consumers spending more time on their mobile devices than ever. In fact, mobile devices account for up to 64 percent of time spent online and 42 percent of mobile users consider mobile the most important resource in their purchase process. While more than one-third of mobile shoppers turn to mobile exclusively, offline activity plays a big role in consumers’ purchase process as more than half (52 percent) reported visiting a physical store and 64 percent completed their purchase offline.

Overall, 10% of consumers say they plan to spend more this year than last year, and multicultural households account for 43% of this year’s projected extra spending with Hispanics accounting for 13%.  

Over the past year, a very notable trend in CivicScience’s data has become apparent with regard to which of these three levers are most influencing the buying and consumption decisions of U.S. adults: advertising on television, advertising on the Internet, or social media “chatter” (comments or recommendations from others).

Today, as the CEO of an advertising agency, I understand the obsession with Millennial consumers but I am baffled by the marketing world’s tendency to look at this entire generation of people as one group with similar traits and tastes. Millennials, also known as Generation Y, were born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. Most agree that people born between 1992 and 2001 make up the key part of this group. This means that a Millennial may be 18 years old or 33 years old.

Rising Share of Never-Married Adults, Growing Gender GapAfter decades of declining marriage rates and changes in family structure, the share of American adults who have never been married is at an historic high.

The Council for Research Excellence (CRE) announced it has published the marketing and advertising industry’s first in-depth primer on Big Data. Titled “Big Data: A Primer for Defining and Implementing Big Data in the Marketing and Advertising Industry,” the report is intended to help orient advertising and media executives to the related opportunities and challenges that will arise as the industry goes from megabytes of data on PCs to petabytes of data in the cloud.

Chief marketers are fast becoming expert urban planners fighting enterprise data sprawl in their digital marketing technology portfolios. They are being challenged to bring disciplined development and cross-functional harmonization to what is an ever more crowded, data-producing landscape.

Of the 65 million grandparents in the United States in 2012, 7 million, or 10 percent, lived with at least one grandchild, according to Coresident Grandparents and Their Grandchildren: 2012, a new report released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Adobe and Nielsen announced a strategic alliance that is expected to deliver a cross-platform system for measuring online TV, video and other digital content across the Web and apps.

The Connected Shopper si based on research conducted in 12 countries across 4 continents, attempts to understand the role that digital plays at every point along what we call the shopper’s Purchase Decision Journey, and to identify both drivers and barriers to purchase that brand marketers and retailers can affect in order to increase sale.

A Record Number of Latinos are Eligible to Vote … But Latinos are a Small Share of Eligible Voters in Key 2014 Races

Shoppers looking for big-ticket items behave differently than smaller spenders. This infographic shares insights into both ends of the spectrum to help marketers reach their target audiences.

How the most popular candy brands rank among Twitter users.