Americans Will Pony Up $40 billion on Gift Cards This Season
One
reason for the rise in popularity of gift cards: "The stigma of the
gift card being a thoughtless gift is gone," said NRF spokesman Scott
Krugman. "People love getting them." (IBD report).
One advantage of gift cards to retailers is that they prolong the holiday
shopping season well past Christmas.
Continue reading... "Americans Will Pony Up $40 billion on Gift Cards This Season" »
Yahoo’s
page views were down 9% month-over-month in November, allowing MySpace
owner Fox Interactive Media to take the overall lead in that category for
the first time, according to comScore data highlighted in an emailed note
today from UBS Investment Research. (reports 
A
new 
Microsoft's
Windows Vista could create up to 100,000 new I.T. jobs in the U.S.,
according to a Microsoft-commissioned study by research firm IDC. Another
IDC study found that Vista's launch will create about 50,000 jobs in six
European countries.
Instant
Messaging (IM) is
an increasingly common communication tool within securities firms, with
a majority of securities employees surveyed converse by IM, and feel it helps them to improve their
productivity, according to a new 
Red
5 Studios, an online video-game developer led by members of the team
behind the wildly popular "World of Warcraft" game, said on
Monday it has raised $18.5 million in venture capital from Benchmark
Capital and Sierra Ventures (Reuters reports).
The world’s 1,000 largest corporate R&D spenders
"The Global Innovation 1000"
companies
spent a total of $407 billion on research and development in 2005,
up 6% from 2004, but only a select few perform significantly better than their competitors over a sustained
period while spending less on R&D than their industry rivals, 
Global
venture capital investment in 2006 is poised to hit a five-year high and
register the highest annual investments of $32 billion since 2001 when VC
investments reached $51.22 billion, 
New
Internet activities such as blogs, video, and phone calls are the
fastest-growing in terms of usage, while email, news/info, and online
shopping continue to dominate Internet users' activities on the web,
according to a report released by 
With
marketers are spending more of their money on 
The table below shows the Top 30 sites in the 'Shopping
and Classifieds - Department Stores' online industry for the month of
October, 2006 based on site visits, 
Listed
below are the top 10 business trends data points for today, culled from
the most authoritative business news and data sources. Today's
trend data points to China growth, Game Consoles, Sabre, Nasdaq100, Tech
R&D credit, and diamonds.
Lower
income doesn't mean lower standards, just different priorities. Low income
consumers in the world's emerging markets want many of the same things out
of life and the same quality in their products as middle class consumers
and differ mainly in their purchasing behavior, 
