Despite gas prices being more than 30% higher than last year, cross-channel shopping is alive and well in the consumer packaged goods industry, according to a SymphonyIRI Group report released Thursday.

Inflation-related concerns will prompt back-to-school shoppers to utilize certain shopping tactics, including smartphone and social network use, to save this year.

Back-to-school budgets will moderately decrease this year, but more consumers will turn to the Internet to score the best deals.

A story on the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch, published Monday, identified Amazon.com as the latest value-oriented retailer to pose challenges to more traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.

Photo-processing is evolving, but it is far from finished. “While consumers are capturing, deleting and electronically sharing more images than ever before, they also are motivated to print larger [photos] and utilize their special images in other product forms,” said Bing Liem, VP sales for Fujifilm North America.


The race is on to capture tomorrow’s click-and-pick shopper — that multichannel consumer who, with a click, wields her phone as an omniscient shopping tool and then either picks her product off the shelf or picks where that product will be waiting for her, be it at a nearby store or in her mailbox. 


Looming gas prices are taking a toll on consumers' shopping habits, according to a special report by SymphonyIRI Group.

Permanently changing consumer perception of what can and cannot be found in any particular channel can be done, and convenience and gas retailer Sheetz is proof of it.

Nielsen has teamed up with a provider of digital grocery tools and a grocery media network to offer consumer packaged goods companies a view into consumers' online supermarket purchases.

A new survey recently conducted by the University of Florida found that retailers lost $37.1 billion in theft last year, up nearly $4 billion from 2009.

Perception feeds reality. That is as true today as it was when the economy first started its rollercoaster plunge back in 2008. The perception is that the consumer is on her way back. And while that is fast becoming reality, today’s retailer will be looking to commit its capital expenditures to more than just the traditional new Main-and-Main locations.

Success is often one of the biggest blind spots a company can have, because you’re so busy doing well you don’t have the time to assess what it is you’re doing.