Winter Holidays

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. — Dole’s entry into the annual New Year’s Day Rose Parade took home the top prize for the third consecutive year.

Dole’s float, called “Dreaming of Paradise,” received the parade’s Sweepstakes Trophy, the highest honor given for the float deemed to be the most beautiful entry.

CINCINNATI — Bounty touted the absorbency and strength of each small sheet of Select-A-Size paper towels at the 2013 Rose Bowl Game’s VIP Tailgate.

New York City -- A report issued Thursday by Experian Marketing Services found that online traffic to the top 500 retail sites on Christmas Day 2012 rose 27% compared to 2011.

The top retail sites received more than 115.5 million total U.S. visits, according to Experian. To date the holiday online traffic for the past 7 weeks to retail sites are up 10% for 2012 vs. 2011.

Other report key findings include:
    

PLANO, Texas — Dr Pepper has launched its latest advertising campaign featuring real people and their “one-of-a-kind” stories.

New York City -- Online sales rose 22.4% on Christmas Day, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, which tracks more than 1 million e-commerce transactions a day from 500 U.S. retailers.

The increase was higher than the 16.4% increase in 2011, and provided one bright spot in what has proven so far to be a lackluster holiday shopping season.

New York City -- Holiday-related sales rose 0.7% from October 28 through December 24, compared with a 2% rise last year, according to a preliminary report from MasterCard Advisors Spending Pulse.

"It has been a very uneven industry performance, probably at least for the last year, and that certainly continued into the holiday season," said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, in a Reuters report.

London -- A report released Thursday by the International Council of Shopping Centers and Path Intelligence showed that U.K. consumers stepped up their pace of holiday shopping over the week ended Dec. 23.

The Path Index—which melds shopping-center footfall and the time spent per visitor into a shopper-hours index—rose by 7.9% from the prior week to its highest reading of 2012 at 151.3 (January 8, 2012 = 100) for the period ending Sunday, Dec. 23.

Amazon.com, LLBean.com and QVC.com were the top three retailers on ForeSee’s Annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction survey.