Consumer Attitudes & Behavior

New York - The Deloitte Consumer Spending Index reached its highest point since November 2013, rising to 4.5 from 4 the prior month. The Index tracks consumer cash flow as an indicator of future consumer spending.    The Index comprises four components – tax burden, initial unemployment claims, real wages and real home prices. Highlights include:   Tax Burden: The tax rate has been effectively unchanged from the previous month at 11.8%.  

With 2014 almost over, another holiday shopping season is drawing to a close. The looming question on everyone’s mind, of course, is whether holiday sales managed to live up to the (mostly) positive holiday forecasts from analysts and retail organizations.   

New York City  - No big surprise that Americans are more connected than ever before, but the newest trend is toward “smart homes” as well. New research from Experian Marketing Services has found that nearly a third of all Americans use at least one type of smart or connected device and 14% of homes are now smart homes, employing connected lights, locks, thermostats, or electrical outlets, among others.  

Los Angeles - When it comes to making online selections, Christmas shoppers are better late than never. A survey released by Bizrate Insights, a division of Connexity, found that many shoppers are still making online holiday purchases, even though there are only a few days left before Christmas. In fact, only 17% of shoppers have finished their Christmas shopping.  

New York - The Brits are no slouches when it comes to holiday advertisements.

The competition between British retail giants to come up with the most compelling TV ad grows more intense every holiday season.

This year, the biggest initial buzz was created by Sainsbury, with its depiction of the famous Christmas truce on the battlefields of World War I.

Seattle - Starbucks Corp. anticipates record purchases of Starbucks gift cards on Dec. 24, citing the trend for customers to push their gift card purchases later and later. In 2013, more than 2 million Starbucks Cards were purchased in the U.S. and Canada on Christmas Eve, representing nearly 1,500 cards purchased per minute.  

Consumers are doing even more holiday shopping from their desktop computers this year, according to a new report from comScore.

The Internet analytics company reports that U.S. consumer spending from desktop computers for the first 44 days of the November-December 2014 holiday shopping season is up 15% from last year, to $42.5 billion.

BOSTON - Payments made via near field communications (NFC)-enabled mobile handsets will account for $130 billion in worldwide consumer retail spend by 2020, according to a study by Strategy Analytics. This equates to 254 million mobile users making five payments per month at an average of just below $9 per transaction.