The Chinese economy has surprised bankers by bouncing back rapidly from the financial downturn.
Between April and June, gross domestic product expanded by an annual 7.9 per cent, meaning the country is likely to hit its target of eight per cent annual growth.
GDP growth was 6.1 per cent in the first quarter, but [...]

[Read more →]

 Experian’s consumer classification system – Mosaic UK – has been updated to reflect demographic and social changes in British society since 2003.
Additional data sources have been added to encompass a more detailed understanding of the ageing population, changes in household composition, the growth in ethnic diversity and the impact of the Internet.
Mosaic UK 2009 draws [...]

[Read more →]

South Korea’s lifting economy could be the precursor for recovery in the region, reports from the Bank of Korea, in the Financial Times and from the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) agree.
The South Korean economy is reported to have grown by 2.3 per cent between April and June – which would mark the fastest quarterly [...]

[Read more →]

Young Australian consumers are increasingly switching off the Internet and reining in their spending in favour of more traditional pastimes, a study from Lifelounge shows.
The annual Urban Market Research report, which analyses the lifestyle choices of 18 to 30-year-olds in Australia, has revealed that the age group’s overall consumer spending dropped AU$5 billion year-on-year to [...]

[Read more →]

 
Global advertising expenditure across television, newspapers, magazines and radio has recorded a drop of 7.2 per cent for the first quarter of 2009 compared to the first quarter of 2008, according to a global advertising trends report released today by research company Nielsen.
The report, Global AdView Pulse, reveals that the global economic crisis is taking [...]

[Read more →]

Media and marketing trade associations from across America – including the USA Direct Marketing Association (DMA) – have joined forces to release self-regulatory principles which protect consumer privacy in ad-supported interactive media; requiring advertisers and [...]

[Read more →]

The UK Call Centre & Customer Management Expo is being held September 22-23, at Birmingham’s NEC. Here’s a preview:
Issues of offshoring and outsourcing are once again making headlines, with industry commentators suggesting that more companies are looking to outsource their marketing fulfilment and customer services in order to provide a more flexible, scalable solution.
The benefits [...]

[Read more →]

 When will the financial gloom lift? Doug Sacks has been gazing into his crystal ball for clues.
The BIG question here and elsewhere remains the weakness of the national and global economies. Specifically, as Americans are fairly impatient people, when will we turn the corner and see the sun shine again?
This does not have to be [...]

[Read more →]

John Caslione (pictured below) navigates through the chaos of the financial storm to a new normality.
The world is more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. National economies are now all intimately linked, interconnected and interdependent upon each other.
While global interdependence works in everyone’s favour in good  times, globalisation’s ‘interlocking fragility’ rapidly spreads much pain and [...]

[Read more →]

 
After months of plummeting, mortgage and home equity marketing direct mail is finally levelling off in the US.
DM intelligence provider, Mintel Comperemedia, reports that for the past six months – after more than two years of declines – the number of home loan offers sent to Americans has been flat. From December 2008 to May [...]

[Read more →]