According to Nielsen, trips to U.S. retail outlets decreased by 1.4% in the third quarter of 2008, compared with Q3 2007. 
Declines were especially steep during the last four weeks of the quarter, which saw the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the near-collapse of Merrill Lynch, and the government bailout of AIG.
Traditional mass retailers (excluding supercenters), department stores, and office supply stores saw the most dramatic declines in the number of shopping trips last quarter vs. a year ago.  Trips to mass retailers dropped by 9.1%, trips to department stores were down …

Most global consumers agree that their countries have hit recession, but opinion on how long the recession will last remains mixed, Nielsen reported Wednesday.
While 53% of those surveyed by Nielsen think their country has hit a prolonged recession that will last more than 12 months, 18% of consumers, concentrated in a handful of emerging markets, like India, Vietnam, China, and Russia, told Nielsen they expect their countries to be out of recession within the next 12 months.
In contrast, consumers in Japan, Germany, Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, Italy, Taiwan, the U.S., and Spain were the …

U.S. consumers are now more likely to check nutritional labels than they were in the past, according to a new survey by Nielsen, released Thursday.  
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of U.S. Consumers reported they notice nutritional information on food packaging more often now than they did two years ago.  More than half (51%) said they always check the fat content on nutrition labels, while nearly half check labels for calories (48%) and trans fats (43%). 
Nielsen also found that two-thirds (67%) of U.S. consumers claimed they “mostly” understand the nutritional information on food packaging, …