Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, Toyota and Hyundai are the finalists for the 2nd annual Nielsen Automotive Green Marketer of the Year award. The award recognizes the brand that made the greatest strides in gaining consumer awareness and positively shifting consumer perceptions for the automotive industry’s environmentally friendly initiatives.

With confidence falling for the seventh consecutive quarter in 31 of 56 global markets according to third quarter global online consumer confidence findings from Nielsen, consumers around the world are more sensitive than ever regarding their future spending budgets.

“Third quarter was volatile and challenging for global economies and financial markets amid stagnant U.S. unemployment figures and a worsening euro zone debt crisis,” said Dr. Venkatesh Bala, Chief Economist at The Cambridge Group, a part of Nielsen. “A recessionary mindset is growing among consumers.”

The strong growth in FMCG sales value in 2010 has continued into the first half of 2011, but this is increasingly being driven by inflation as volume growth has slowed down.

Just because someone shops in a mall this holiday season doesn’t mean they won’t be shopping online as well. In fact, mall goers are incredibly active consumers across a number of sectors, including media, retail goods, online, travel and automotive.

New research by NM Incite helps uncover what impacts social media may have for marketers trying to build their brands and connect with their audience more directly.

Consumers today are increasingly mobile and as technology advancements continue around the world, retailing will evolve to keep pace. And while online shopping has shown impressive growth momentum over the past few years in industries such as travel, publishing, electronics and even clothing, the pace of change has been much slower for consumer-packaged goods.

While many consumers, particularly in North America, report stocking up as the primary reason for making a trip to the grocery store, that reason is not uniformly widespread across the globe, according to Nielsen’s 2011 Global Online Survey.

Nearly six in 10 (59%) global consumers look for sales to save on household expenses—the leading saving strategy of eight measured across all regions and most prevalent in North America (73%) and Europe (60%), according to Nielsen’s 2011 Global Online Survey of more than 25,000 Internet respondents across 51 countries. Using coupons was the second most popular saving strategy, used by nearly half (48%) of global online consumers.

Consumers around the world continue their broad efforts to save money at the checkout counter, but while low prices are important to shoppers, getting a good value for their money takes priority.