If I were to ask you to name something you do far more today than you did a year or two ago, what would you say? You might mention shopping on Amazon, or ordering food through delivery services like DoorDash or Uber Eats, trends undoubtedly accelerated by the pandemic. But there's no question that streaming content via Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, and other platforms was becoming a way of life for most people even before COVID-19 arrived and upended everything. You'd be hard-pressed to find a person who doesn't consume TV shows and movies through at least one of these services while you're bound to encounter individuals who have ditched cable for good.  Here are just a few of the reasons why streaming content is all the rage: You have more control over the content you watch You can skip commercials  You can binge watch shows and movies you may have missed when they premiered  You can do it all in the comfort of your own home  Gone are the days when we had to settle f...

These unprecedented economic times are turning normal shopping and saving patterns on their heads. Whether you work in hospitality or healthcare, finance or education, you've surely felt the effects either in your industry or in your personal life. Overall, U.S. retail sales dropped by a record 16.4% from March to April as business shutdowns caused by the coronavirus shellacked stores big and small. Unfortunately, many were already in a precarious state pre-pandemic thanks to stiff competition from Amazon. Nearly $1 of every $5 spent at retailers last month went to non-store retailers, signaling a definite shift toward online shopping. With exception to online, not a single retail category was spared in April. Furniture stores and appliance/electronics stores absorbed whopping losses of 60% or more. Car dealers saw a plunge of 13%. Even clothing retailers have been walloped. Clothing-store sales sagged 79% and department stores 29%. In recent weeks, J.Crew, Neiman Ma...

There's no question we've been living in a different world the last couple of weeks -- one that has upended our routines and made Zoom meetings, food delivery, and shopping for virtually everything through Amazon our new, sometimes unpleasant reality. No event has felt this disruptive and widespread since the global recession of 2008. While back then we were dealing with a global financial crisis, this time, as President Donald Trump put it, we are grappling with an invisible enemy. So just how will the world be different once this pandemic is behind us? As was the case with the Great Recession, people are going to retrench for a while. From souped-up cars and big vacations to fancy clothes, consumers are going to put the kibosh on high-end purchases until they feel that (1) the economy is mending (2) their financial affairs are in order. The first order of business for many will be finding a job. Those who have been fortunate enough to still have jobs may be contem...

The last few weeks have felt surreal, haven't they? I've never experienced anything like this Coronavirus pandemic in my life, and I'm sure many of you second that sentiment. While the most important thing we can do right now is keep ourselves and our families safe and healthy, many are already starting to chafe of cabin fever. They complain of feeling isolated and disconnected from the world in a way they never have before. Chances are, you've already worked from home for a few days. Such an arrangement has its share of pros and cons. Sure, you can work in your undees, spend more time with family, and not have to grapple with traffic. But some people just aren't as self-motivated as others, and without a boss a few feet away to keep them focused on their work, they become easily distracted -- whether by their kids clamoring to play, the cat meowing for food, or the temptation to watch The Price is Right. And while we can still do takeout and deliver...

In a recent post, I discussed how Macy's holiday sales fell well below expectations, prompting it to close 68 stores nationwide. The Limited, a once-popular women's clothing brand that offers workwear and casual attire, has met an even darker fate: It shuttered all of its stores around the country. Only its website will remain up and running, and it will continue to ship nationwide. Despite owning such popular companies as Victoria's Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch, the brand fell on hard times in the mid-2000s. Sun Capital Partners, a private firm, took over its management in 2007. Still, like Macy's and other brick-and-mortar retailers, The Limited has had a hard time fending off e-commerce giants like Amazon, not to mention fast fashion stores like Forever 21 and H&M. The news comes as a shock to many people who have been shopping at The Limited for a long time, including my sister and wife. In my view, The Limited and Macy's chief problem bo...

In many of my posts, I muse about what life must have been like in the 18th century and express a burning desire to travel back to colonial times. One of the things I can't imagine, though, is living in an era devoid of the technology we've come to rely upon today. Indeed, the internet has revolutionized the world like nothing else. Who would have imagined we'd be availing of it to do so many things -- from buy groceries and find love to speak with friends and family in different corners of the world? But the internet wasn't always as vast as it is today, with more than one billion websites. In fact, on August 6, 1991, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee published the first-ever website while working at CERN, a physics lab in Switzerland. Appropriately, the site described the Web and how to use it. We should feel blessed to live in a time when technology affords us the opportunity to do things our ancestors could only dream of. You can buy virtually...

Guess what's in style again? That's right -- shopping. CNN Money reports that retail sales rose 1.3% in April compared to the prior month -- the largest monthly gain in over a year and a promising sign that the U.S. economy is improving after a disappointing first quarter. But people aren't opening their wallets and swiping their credit cards for everything. Right now, beauty products, sporting goods, cars, and eating out at restaurants is the rage. Clothes and electronics, on the other hand, aren't as popular this spring. Investors fear that buyers just aren't excited about new clothing and accessories. Consumers also have a clear preference for shopping online, as evidenced by Amazon, whose stock hit a record high this week above $700 a share. Traditional big box stores like Macy's, whose stock tumbled 18% this week, are in dire straits. Some economists say that people shouldn't read into the bump in sales too much. They say the gains in April sa...

Everyone and their brother shops at Amazon.com. It is, after all, the biggest Internet-based retailer in the U.S., offering everything from books and apparel to food and jewelry. It turns out that Amazon is now cracking down on people who are posting phony reviews to the site. The latest case involves users of Fiverr.com, an online marketplace where you can take on such "gigs" as writing a news story for $10. Amazon discovered that people were offering to write positive reviews of products they'd never even used, often with text provided by the seller. Sometimes they'd go so far as to receive empty envelopes in the mail to create the illusion that they were receiving shipments of these products. Amazon is suing 1,000 people, but the most bizarre part of the story is that the internet giant doesn't even know their true identities. It has only user names to go by, and the fact these people employed multiple accounts and IP addresses makes it even more diffic...

How many times have you gone into a store and seen signs that say something along these lines: "Supplies running fast!" "Buy them before they're gone!" "Only 5 left!" "Sale ends soon!" Now, be honest: How many times did you go through with the purchase because you believed what the signage said to be true? Yep, even I've fallen for it myself, and I actually majored in marketing and minored in psychology! In marketing and consumer psychology, it's what we call the scarcity principle : Consumers attach more value to things that are few in quantity and thus feel more compelled to purchase such items. But this isn't limited to brick-and-mortar stores -- companies also use this marketing tactic online. Take Amazon.com. At some point, you're bound to come across an item whose description includes "Only 3 left in stock. Order soon." Companies seldom run out of inventory, unless we're talking about much...

These days, the popularity of television series is quite remarkable -- the likes of which we've never quite seen before. Whether it's friends, family, or co-workers, it seems everyone watches at least one TV series. Among the most popular ones are: The Walking Dead Game of Thrones Empire Breaking Bad True Detective Sherlock  Now, I've never been one to watch these kinds of shows, but when I first saw True Detective being advertised, it looked interesting -- and so I figured that watching one episode couldn't hurt. I became instantly hooked! It was only then I understood why so many people I know become so enthralled by these shows.  I started thinking about the reasons why these shows resonate so closely with us, the viewers.  Here are a couple of reasons that may explain their surge in popularity in recent years: They distract us from our daily lives : Considering that our lives seem to be getting busier and more stressful by the day, these shows ...

As a kid growing up, I distinctly remember friends and family being all gung-ho about going to the movies. Some of us made it a weekly ritual -- in fact, we would catch one (if not two) showings each week. These days, it seems the fervor over cinema has died down quite a bit. Yes, production companies are still raking in massive profits at the box office, but it just doesn't seem like people -- at least those in my immediate social circle -- are as interested in making the trek to the movie theater on the weekends. Is it the same for you? There are several reasons for this: First, the cost of movie tickets continues to skyrocket. AMC Theatres locations in my city charge a whopping $22 for a pair of tickets to an evening showing. That doesn't even include snacks or popcorn! Second, enter streaming content. We all use or have heard of content providers like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. These companies provide a cheaper way to watch movies -- and from the comfort of your hom...

In this day and age of such rapid technological change, anyone who still utters the words "I'm bored" deserves, at the very least, a slap on the wrists. I think our ancestors would be turning in their graves at such a pronouncement considering all that technology has made possible. In their lifetime, all they could really look forward to were leisurely pursuits like reading and writing (my personal favorite even now), knitting, and storytelling. Our generation, on the other hand, has the internet, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, Apple, Amazon -- you name it. Sometimes we definitely take what we have for granted. Back in colonial times, people had to ride a horse for days of not weeks just to reach another city -- let alone a different state. There's so much we can do nowadays, whether or not we avail of the latest technology. Charities could always use another pair of hands. Cities everywhere are teeming with parks, gyms, shopping centers, movie theater ...

Few things have revolutionized the world in the 20th and 21st centuries like the internet has. As consumers, we depend on the internet for everything from buying groceries to making doctor's appointments. Have you ever imagined what life without the internet would be like? If the internet weren't around, We would not be able to buy gifts, groceries and other consumer goods on sites like Amazon and arrange to have them delivered in a day or two There would be no online banking, necessitating a trip or call to the bank every so often Many of us would not be in relationships or married since a good percentage of us first met our partner online We wouldn't be able to communicate with friends and family members via email, blogs, Facebook or other social media Companies would not be able to sell their products online - (can you imagine how much lower their profits would be?) There would be no iTunes or YouTube There would be little to do via our mobile devices other ...

In this day and age -- where technology reigns supreme and people have a dizzying array of options at their disposal when it comes to leisure and entertainment -- people still complain of being bored. This is just mind boggling! Can you imagine what people who lived in colonial times -- when the George Washingtons and Thomas Jeffersons of the world made front page news -- would be saying? These people had little else to look forward to but reading, writing, farming, and storytelling. They corresponded by mail and had to wait months for a response. They'd probably give their right arms to be able to live in this era of smart phones, tablets, Facebook, and Amazon shopping. It's amazing that people could still feel bored when there's so much to do thanks to technology, including: Web surfing and shopping Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services Reading, whether the conventional way or using devices like the Kindle Interacting with friends via text or soc...