With projected weak holiday sales this season and deal-seeking activities rampant, online retailers have an opportunity to gain share through their own web sites and social media outlets.

With American consumers set to spend less over holidays, many are focused on stretching their dollars as Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, approaches.

Nielsen fielded its annual holiday retail survey at the beginning of this month to get an understanding of consumers’ holiday shopping plans.

While beleaguered shoppers will be looking for ways to make the season bright, retailers can do their part by bringing some much needed holiday cheer to the shopping experience.

Despite increased optimism about the economy, the social media landscape indicates that we are in a similar place to where we were this time last year.

The effects of the recession may be seen on the BBQ grill this Fourth of July. Sales of hot dogs have been going up in recent months while register rings for more expensive bratwurst and knockwurst have been declining, according to new research from The Nielsen Company. This is a reversal of sales trends the past several years.
July 3rd traditionally has the highest sales volume for all three types of meat. Consumers were 50 percent more likely to buy hot dogs during the four-week period ending on July 12, 2008 …

The early predictions were gloomy: the recession gripping the U.S. would make for a dismal holiday shopping season for retailers.  And while many retailers certainly felt the effects of the economic downturn, holiday dollar sales in 2008 actually increased 5.8 percent or $99.5 billion across grocery and drug stores, mass merchandisers and convenience stores, according to Nielsen.
Categories that drove the highest sales spikes were musical instruments and accessories, with more than half of the purchases for the year made in the last eight weeks of 2008.  Women’s and children’s fragrances, baking …

Sales in the British grocery sector picked up over the holidays, but were largely negated by weak sales at the beginning of December, Nielsen reported last week.
Growth (by value) of British food sales for the four-week period ending December 27 was up by 2.6% year-over-year overall and by 4.5% year-over-year for grocery multiples.
“The consumer was much more cautious this year, and it was a back to basics Christmas,” Mike Watkins, senior manager, retailer services, Nielsen, noted.  “Sales of packaged grocery (+11%), frozen (+10%), and confectionery (+8%) were buoyant, while sales of …

Microsoft’s Xbox is the most buzzed about game console so far this holiday season, Nielsen Online reported Thursday.
The Xbox 360 garnered the largest share of online buzz between November 1 and December 9, with 41.6% of blog messages mentioning Xbox, Wii or Playstation.
In comparison, Nintendo’s Wii was mentioned in 29.8% of game console blog messages, while Sony’s Playstation ranked third with mentions in 28.6% of gaming-related blog posts.

Nielsen Online reports that traffic from home and work to the Holiday eShopping Index increased 10 percent year over year on Black Friday, growing from 28.8 million unique visitors in 2007 to 31.7 million unique visitors in 2008 across more than 120 representative online retailers.
“Even with the weakening economy, an unstable stock market and a rising unemployment rate, Black Friday traffic to online retail sites grew at a double digit rate this year,” said Ken Cassar, vice president, industry insights, Nielsen Online.
Black Friday Online Conversations and Consumer Perceptions
To gauge …