Even though news of the peanut butter salmonella outbreak has subsided, peanut butter sales continue to decline.
During the four-week period ending February 21, 2009, sales of jarred peanut butter fell to $87.2 million, down 2.3 percent from the same period in 2008.  41.8 million pounds of jarred peanut butter was sold during the current four-week period, down 13.3 percent for the same period a year ago.  Pounds sold is at the lowest point of the three-year span Nielsen has tracked the total U.S. Food/Drug/Mass (including Walmart) Stores channel.
“While most brands …

Ken Cassar, Nielsen Online
For our March 11 webinar, “Retail Recession Realities,” I’ll be recommending coping strategies for retailers dealing with the ongoing economic crisis. The news has gone from bad to worse in the past six months, but there are approaches retailers can take to survive the lean times and even come out ahead when (dare I say it?) the economy recovers.
The Web offers opportunities for growth like no other channel. Quick case in point – readership of traditional offline newspapers has declined significantly of late, and with it, the …

It’s a long running joke: men and women are wired differently.  But the field of neuroscience has proven that this is no joking matter, and the ramifications are tremendous for consumer goods manufacturers, as women buy or influence the purchase of 80 percent of all consumer goods in the U.S.
So what are the key differences between the male and female brain? There are some key structural differences, such as a larger hippocampus in women, as well as a heavier reliance on brain areas that contain mirror neurons, which enable a …

A jar of mayonnaise or a package of tea is a straightforward product.  But if manufacturers market those products in the U.K. the same way they do in the U.S., they are probably making a mistake.  Nielsen has compiled the following “shopper truths” from around the world to help consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers successfully navigate consumer shopping behavior:

Same category, different market: often requires a different shopper strategy — While some universal truths exist within categories across borders, success of activation strategies …

Are consumers shopping more often? Spending less? Buying more store brands? Shifting channels? How are retailers responding? The Nielsen Economic Current tracks trends in 11 linchpin countries, indexes financial health and predicts growth trends on critical measures including GDP, consumer spending, inflation, market value and volume indices.

Since mid-February (the original date for the DTV switch) more than a half-million homes have prepared themselves for the Digital TV transition according to an update from The Nielsen Company.  As of March 1, 3.9 percent of all TV homes remain unready for the upcoming transition to all-digital broadcasting and would be unable to receive any television programming at all if the transition occurred today. Congress has set June 12 as the new date for the nationwide transition to DTV.

As economic uncertainty continues to loom over most of the country, Americans are watching their money and shopping less. But while that fact might spell doom for the nation’s retailers, there are a number of opportunities available to those companies who are able to look at how consumers are changing their behavior and innovate in how they do business to leverage these changes.
“Big Players Think Small in Format Fights,” an article in Consumer Insight by Todd Hale, senior vice president, Consumer & Shopper Insights with Nielsen, outlines how the economy …

The days of super sizing are over. The big players in grocery are opting for smaller, niche footprints in urban locations featuring a focus on packaged fresh food offerings. The idea is to make shopping more rewarding, and to reward consumers with coffee boutiques, new ideas, special discounts, free groceries and gas cards.

Over the last decade, Americans’ awareness of and sensitivity to the environment has grown dramatically, and environmental concerns regularly top opinion polls as being important.  Going hand-in-hand with this awareness is a desire to purchase products that are green, such as those that are organic, natural or have an environmentally friendly benefit. Retailers, food and consumer product manufacturers have sought to capitalize on this trend by launching new lines of products touting their natural qualities. The Natural Marketing Institute estimates that the size of the green marketplace will reach $420 …

Learn about how women’s brains are fundamentally different than men’s—and why understanding the critical differences are crucial to marketing success today.