From MarketingCharts.org: full story here

Print Beats SocNets for '11 Holiday Deal-Seekers

Print (15%) proved a far more popular way to find holiday shopping deals in 2011 than Facebook (3%) or Twitter (1%), according to a survey released in January 2012 by Crowd Science. The largest proportion of respondents said that visiting companies’ websites (24%) was their favorite way to find deals, although the same proportion said they had no preferred method. Email newsletters were cited by 13% of respondents, ahead of talking with friends and family (9%) and online flyers (5%).

Online Not the Preferred Purchase Channel

Although 23% of the consumers surveyed said they preferred to conduct all of their holiday shopping online, they were outweighed by the proportion (35%) that did not prefer to do so. Those aged 24 or younger were less inclined to prefer online shopping for the holidays, as compared to older shoppers.

Additionally, 1 in 5 respondents cited an anxiety about security when buying online. The concern over online safety was more pronounced among lighter internet users (less than 24 hours per week) compared to their more experienced counterparts.

1 in 5 Shoppers Procrastinated

17% of respondents admitted to doing nearly all of their holiday shopping at the last minute. Among the 43% who denied being last-minute shoppers, women were more prominent than men (51% vs. 38%). According to survey results released in December 2011 by PriceGrabber, , with men more likely than women to do so (11% vs. 8%).

Other Findings:

• Only 15% of respondents to the Crowd Science survey said that the holidays are their favorite time to shop in person, compared to 47% who disagreed. The negative sentiment was more pronounced as time progressed, with disagreement climbing from 45% before Thanksgiving to 49% as the holidays approached.
• 4 in 10 anticipated spending about the same amount during the holidays as they had the year before. Those who indicated they would spend less traced more to lower income households. As the holiday season progressed, the study found a 5% point increase in those anticipating spending more: the week of Thanksgiving, 17% said they would spend more, rising to 22% as the Christmas holiday drew closer.

About the Data: The Crowd Science findings were gathered from a random sample of 1,756 respondents from November 16-28, 2011, and 3,545 respondents from November 29-December 29, 2011.

 

 

From MIN:

Flipboard Offering Publishers Magazine-Like iPad Feed Experience
Monday, December 6, 2010
Steve Smith

How ironic that a start-up that aggregates and formats simple social media and RSS feeds onto the iPad is helping magazines look more magazine-like on the tablet platform. But the buzz-fueled aggregation app Flipboard is doing exactly that with inaugural partners Bon Appétit, Washington Post Magazine and Lonely Planet. In an effort to ‘iPadify’ shared content from major media partners, Flipboard is creating a more sophisticated layout framework for articles that are fed into its app. Flipboard offers a unique system that it calls a ‘social magazine,’ which turns RSS, Twitter and Facebook feeds into neatly laid out illustrated pages that literally flip to advance and pop-up fuller article excerpts in a window with accompanying image. The new partnership wit media companies takes that elegance to the next level. When a user double taps on an article from a partner like Bon Appétit or ABC News, the reader gets a multi-page rendition of the article in a magazine-like layout, including full page ads.

“We believe the timeless principles of print can enhance the social media experience, not only to make content more discoverable but also to make it easier to read,” says Flipboard CEO Mike McCue. Flipboard had been rumored to be in conversations with media companies about ways to help them monetize the feeds that Flipboard uses to populate its product. Flipboard is working with ad agency OMD to test the full page ads that occupy these enhanced articles. Initial sponsors include Pepsi, Gatorade, Infiniti, Showtime and Levi’s.

In our use of the featured Flipboard pages, the system did produce very readable and engaging page designs. The excerpts click through to a richer environment that is closer to the typical magazine app than it is to a Web site, to which Flipbook pages often link. The full-page ads generally have been well-tuned to the touch and feel strengths of the platform. Best of all, Flipboard does all of this while retaining its signature snappiness. The app has always done a very good job of caching the most likely next pages a user will tap and so creating a more seamless flipping experience.

Overall, Flipboard appears to be making good on its earlier promise to give something back to the media partners on whose content its app relies. This is an interesting new way to syndicate content into a touch-based tablet ecosystem that lets publishers keep a handle on the ways in which their content is presented, and keep their fingers in the revenue stream it might produce. 

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