Marketing Pilgrim

Holiday shopping used to mean a trip to the local mall and a Saturday jaunt out to the outlet center in the next county. But this year, people in the US will be buying gifts from all over the world because they can do it easily and cheaply, from the comfort of their home.

The borderless consumer is just one of the game-changing retail trends discussed at a recent event sponsored by WomenCorporateDirectors.

Instant currency conversion tools, multi-language websites and no-borders web hosts like eBay and Etsy, have made it just as easy to buy a gift from Spain as it is from Kansas.

Not only are geographical boundaries disappearing, but so are the old-school “retail channels.”

Susan Chambers, Executive Vice President, Global People Division for Walmart said,

Every month we go through the same process. New data is released about the current state of search and the end of Google’s domination is celebrated (or at least used as a link bait headline). Here are some of the latest headlines that trumpet Google’s end based on the latest comScore reports.

ZDNet – Google search share dips; Bing and Yahoo catching up

Business Insider – Google Is Down, Bing And Yahoo Are Up, In The Latest comScore Search Data Release

The reality is that Google did lose three tenths of a percent in share while Yahoo and Microsoft picked up a combined 5 tenths of a percent in the explicit search category. See the chart below for more information.

Simply put, Bing is getting creative in trying to get people to use the search engine. This latest effort is definitely geared to a younger demographic which is the least likely to have already developed a near unchangeable Google habit for searching.

This says that either Microsoft is in this for the long run (meaning they are cultivating future Bing users) or they are getting desperate and trying to make inroads wherever they possibly can. Either way it’s a novel approach and one that we most likely won’t see from Google who, in the search arena at least, acts more like the IBM of the search world rather than the hip new kid.

Advertising Age reports

Yesterday, we looked at some of the information that was given the latest Nielsen study looking at some of our social media habits as denizens of the web.

The chart below which was featured as SAI’s Chart of the Day yesterday really gives some perspective as to just how dominant Facebook is in obtaining and keeping an audience. Now how well that translates into advertising etc remains to be seen with some saying that even the mighty Facebook may have missed their revenue projections by a fair margin. Revenue or not the one thing they are collecting are the online minutes by the bushel full. In fact, the chart shows that the next four brands combined don’t even add up to Facebook’s share of online time.

It’s only been September for a couple of days now, but its time to start thinking about Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls and that jolly guy in the fur-trimmed red suit. Horror tales of a poor economy might have you worried about a horrendous Grinch-mas, but the analysts over at eMarketer say this holiday season will be merry and bright (ish.)

Take a look at the numbers from the MasterCard Advisors’ “SpendingPulse” report. That’s an average retail sales growth of 14% over the same time last year.

The news gets better for online retailers, as experts say more people than ever will be using a virtual shopping cart instead of the metal kind this holiday season.

Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer principal analyst says;

When you’re cruising around the internet, how much of your time is spent on a social network or blog? According to a new study published by Nielsen, those two categories eat up 23% of internet usage overall. This is double online gaming, which comes in at number two and after that, it takes 75 different categories to account for the remaining 35% of time spent.

Battle of the Sexes

Talking boys against the girls, the girls rule social media with the exception of LinkedIn and Wikia. It doesn’t look like Google+ was part of the survey and though I have no proof to back it up, that feels like it’s leaning more toward the men than the women. (Does anyone have numbers on that?)