Amid seemingly contradictory economic datapoints, manufacturers and retailers will need to focus on the habits of the consumer for clarity and insights into the pace of recovery.

Lower prices for food and other household items are great for consumers, but for retailers, they don’t always achieve the desired rise in sales as the competition is quick to follow.

Continued unemployment means more sensitivity to price and promotion. As marketers plan for the future, understanding the nuances of price sensitivity and the consumer’s shifting value paradigm will be critical to success.

With an increasing amount of global buzz proclaiming the emergence of an economic recovery, the Nielsen Economic Current shows definite signs of renewed consumer confidence and sales growth in some countries.

With more Americans out of work, career development web sites have seen a surge in traffic, according to a new report from Nielsen Online.  In January 2009, there were 49.7 million unique visitors to these sites, up from 41.5 million unique visitors in January 2008, an increase of 20 percent.
CareerBuilder Network was the top destination with 20.8 million visitors, followed by Yahoo! HotJobs and Monster, with 11.7 million and 9.5 million unique visitors, respectively.  Among age groups, the number of unique visitors to career development web sites age 65 and …