To no surprise, the U.S.’s legendary consumer culture hits the roof during the holiday season, with average per-person spending on gifts among the highest levels in the world. Americans aren’t the biggest Christmas spenders, though.
Smart Spending
Best Holiday Shopping Discounts That Coincide with Free Shipping Day
Today is Free Shipping Day, when over 2,500 e-retailers offer free shipping on at least some purchases. Considering that free shipping promos have been fairly standard throughout the holiday season, and that free shipping is offered after Free Shipping Day has passed, the reaction to today’s shopping event may be: big whoop. But what if …
Black Friday Remorse: Consumers Already Returning Holiday Purchases
Many of us rushed out to take advantage of the countless “holiday shopping events” around Thanksgiving weekend. Now, we’re slinking back to those same stores — except this time, we want our money back.
Big Deal: A Major New Player (eBay’s PayPal) Enters the Daily Deal Market
Without question, Groupon has been a tremendous business success story thus far, inspiring the legions on copycat daily deal sites, along with the previously unheard-of notion that coupons can, in fact, be cool. The latest major force to leap into the field dominated by Groupon and LivingSocial is PayPal, which is expected to start …
‘Tis the Season for Procrastinating Shoppers: Free Shipping Available Closer to Christmas
Free Shipping Day takes place this Friday, December 16. On that day, more than 2,000 e-retailers (and counting) will offer free shipping for some or all purchases. But before and after Free Shipping Day, guess what’s readily …
Latest Top Holiday Deals: Site-Wide Discounts of 30%, 40%, Even 50% Off
Don’t fret if you missed out on big online sales offered on Cyber Monday, or the site-wide discounts that followed. In the current e-retail scene, it’s all but guaranteed that when one set of deals expires, another slew of …
Why You Should Shop For Cars When You’re Grumpy
Nearly all accounts about why people have the tastes and preferences that they do center around the idea that the human brain has been “wired” to have those tastes and preferences because of advantages they provided to our …
There’s a 1 in 5 Chance You’ll Hate a Holiday Gift This Year
Here’s another argument for having everybody pick out presents via gift registry, or perhaps just cutting to the chase and buying gifts for yourself. According to a new survey, there’s a 20% chance you’ll get a crummy present …
How to Find Travel Bargains in the Troubled Eurozone
The Euro is about as low relative to the U.S. dollar as it’s been all year, as policymakers and bankers alike fret that the shared currency masks deep sovereign debt problems and that the European economy is about to slide into …
Green Monday? Gift Card Weekend? Enough With the ‘Special’ Holiday Shopping Events Already!
Consumers to Tech Companies: Please, Stop the Flood of New Gadgets
In a new survey, nearly half of consumers (48%) “feel high-tech manufacturers bring new products to market faster than people need them.”
A Quarter of Extreme Couponers Have Incomes of $75,000 or More
When researchers from the University of Arizona set out to study people’s couponing habits and motivations, they discovered that a significant number of the most die-hard coupon aficionados aren’t clipping out of financial need. …