Posts Tagged ‘ Economy ’
One of my favorite recent books is Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan. While reading the book last year, I was struck by a point that Nassim made regarding the narrative fallacy, or our inclination as analysts to only look at data through the lens of our chosen hypothesis (highlighting data that makes our point and ignoring [...][ READ MORE ]
Thanksgiving is almost here, time for turkey, pumpkin pie – and online shopping. Each year Thanksgiving is the peak traffic day to the Retail 500, particularly among many of the brick & mortar players, who use the online channel to help inform shoppers about in-store (and online) Black Friday deals. Although bad news about holiday [...][ READ MORE ]
In recent weeks, we have been watching visits to the retail and travel categories as consumer spending continues to decline. There have been several factors impacting traffic – the elections, the economy, and also the calendar, with Thanksgiving falling later in the season this year. Typically Thanksgiving is a major time for travel, but in [...][ READ MORE ]
Last week I wrote about the decline in visits to the websites of the top 500 retailers (ranked by traffic), a trend that continued for the week ending October 18, 2008 with a 5% year-over-year decline. This was the seventh consecutive week that retail traffic was down, the first weeks with a downturn in traffic [...][ READ MORE ]
Last week, several retailers announced steep same-store sales (based upon physical stores open for at least a year) declines in September as compared to previous years. Additionally, other economic indicators such as the Deloitte Research’s Leading Index of Consumer Spending declined in September. At Hitwise, we have been tracking these various economic indicators very closely [...][ READ MORE ]
It’s been a wild and uncomfortable ride on Wall Street for the past few days, beginning with the news of Lehman Brothers and AIG coming very close to bankruptcy as well as the Merrill Lynch acquisition by Bank of America. While the credit crunch continues to impact the global financial markets, we have seen traffic [...][ READ MORE ]
From our ABCNews Blog: Despite reports from retailers of expected declines in the back-to-school retail season, online data reveals that visits to office supply and school supply sites is holding steady when compared to previous year’s visits. The chart below provides a three-year perspective on visits to office/school supply websites. The dramatic yearly spikes occur [...][ READ MORE ]
From our ABCNews Blog: Last week’s report on existing home sales by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), revealing a 2.6 percent decline from May, added to the pile of sobering news about the housing market and the economy. Here at Hitwise, we have found, in the past, that Internet activity around home purchase decisions [...][ READ MORE ]
The first wave of stimulus rebates via direct deposit has curious consumers checking out the IRS website to find out when to expect their checks. The market share of visits to IRS.gov jumped 124% for the week ending May 3, 2008 from the previous week and continued to rise another 15% for the week ending [...][ READ MORE ]
My weekly TIME column is up today. There really is no such thing as a free lunch… Tweet[ READ MORE ]
