With the economy effecting consumers, retailers, and marketers alike, this week’s Nielsen’s Consumer360 Conference presents an opportunity to think about new ways of addressing this marketing challenge.

On Tuesday, a session called “Data Mining the Recession”, presented by Nielsen’s Mark Laceky and Mitch Kriss identified three main ways shoppers are trying to save money.

There has been much speculation about how this April’s game sales figures will stack up, based on the reported declines in March, concerns about how resistant gaming is to the recession, and even the effect of Easter falling in March instead April this year. But the prime focus has been the quality and popularity of the slate of games released. On that score, the weekly Video Game Tracking survey shows that consumers did not have as high of purchase interest for games released in April 2009 compared to the same month last year.

The …

3.3 million or 2.9% of U.S. TV households remain completely unready for the transition to all digital
broadcast that will take place on June 12, 2009. That is an improvement more than 200,000
households in two weeks with just over four weeks until the transition.

Read Nielsen’s complete media release

Collaboration is the theme vividly painted at The Nielsen Company’s Consumer 360 morning kick off – as attendees found themselves consumed in data illustrating a continuously changing consumer mindset, fed by an ongoing shift in consumer psychology. And the message was clear from the start: collaboration at the retail-vendor level will be key the successfully navigating this challenging, changing landscape.

The economic downturn has been a boon to dollar stores, which attracted increased consumer spending in 2008, including spending among high and middle income shoppers, according to The Nielsen Company. Nielsen’s analysis of consumer shopping habits shows consumers at all income levels shopping more at dollar stores, with high income shoppers spending 18 percent more at dollar stores in the second half of 2008 compared to the prior year. Dollar stores are outpacing major consumer packaged goods (CPG) channels among both low and high income shoppers. The …

Demographic and economic shifts over the next ten years will dramatically reshape the growth of consumer packaged goods (CPG), according to new research from Nielsen which was presented today at the Consumer 360 conference in Orlando.
Categories that are likely to experience solid growth include ethnic health and beauty products, flour/shortening/sugar/yeast/eggs, and a variety of health-related goods such as vitamins and medications/remedies.  The slowest growth categories are expected to be toys and sporting goods, breakfast foods, baby care and pet products.
In just ten years time, the face of America will change: fewer households will have …

We are very excited to welcome more than 700 CPG manufacturers, retailers and industry association representatives to Consumer 360 here in Orlando today.

This year’s theme, “Clarity through Collaboration” is designed with you in mind and we have a strong line-up of industry leaders here with us to offer insights on how you can successfully engage and win consumers in this ever-changing economic landscape.

When the economy is buzzing, most companies can afford to overlook inefficiencies or take a broader view of what their customers want. But when times are tough, as they are now, companies have little choice but to re-evaluate how they do business if they hope to continue to grow and prosper. Managers are faced with essentially two choices: cut costs or understand precisely where the most profitable market demand is and align more effectively with it. Both options are difficult, but only one can achieve both short- and long-term objectives.

Fueled by the expansion of smartphones and the availability of unlimited data packages, the U.S. mobile internet market grew 74% between Feb 07 and Feb 09 according to Nielsen. The most talked about handset, the iPhone, had a U.S. audience of 5.1 million unique users in January 2009. Though this still represents just a fraction of the mobile universe, the device has had an undeniable halo effect on mobile media adoption.

Australia and New Zealand withstood the shockwaves of the global financial crisis as long as possible, but by the end of 2008, ad spending took a hit.
In Australia, estimated ad spend in main media for the year was up 2 percent over 2007.  Year on year comparisons saw the first two quarters of the year posted growth of 14 percent and 5.5 percent, but by the third quarter, spending declined 0.5 percent while the fourth quarter saw a decline of 3.5 percent.

Media Outlet
2008 (US$000’s)
2007 (US$000’s)
% Change

TV
3,157,160
3,184,216
-1%

Newspapers
2,773,024
2,640,745
5%

Magazines
928,759
901,670
3%

Radio
515,324
508,041
1%

Cinema
63,786
61,966
3%

Outdoor
392,705
383,791
2%

Other
227,671
231,145
-2%

TOTAL …