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Research shows that getting a deal has no financial or social status boundaries—it’s a human thing. We love the thrill of scoring savings, especially for something with higher perceived value or item we crave—cue the dopamine. According to Mark Ellwood, author of “Bargain Fever,” consumers should never pay full price for anything anyway. Nowhere is that living proof more so than on daily deal sites like Groupon, Living Social, and the myriad of me-toos, now a staple of our on

It’s the golden age of “curation” and smart marketers are exploiting it to their full advantage —but consumers may be losing something in the process if we go too far with this trend. Our hyper-reliance on a computer or human to filter choices or “advise“ us what we should read, eat, buy, wear, or anything else has been thrust into the stratosphere by digital saturation of social media, pre-digested content, and curation tools. It seems that while our world has gotten bigger

If you blinked, you may have missed the controversy this past month over a “Got Milk” campaign “Everything I do is Wrong” which featured men suffering from the misery of their wives and girlfriends’ PMS symptoms and offering milk as the panacea. Clearly the intention was what we’ve all joked about-women are  bitchy around their period and take it out on their guys. And now the men–the victims here–can fight back by offering their partners a full serving of the Milk Elixir to

2010 was a great year for marketing folks to get back some of its mojo and play with some toys in the social media sandbox, but the people who really fueled all the excitement was the collective “me” who enjoyed the dim limelight telling the world what “we” are doing, where “we” are going, what “we” are thinking via Twitter, Facebook  and other social media. In fact, any marketing would be impossible without their participation. But it seems like our oversharing culture also

When I heard about Small Business Saturday, held this past weekend, I thought – great – a sanctioned opportunity to acknowledge small businesses and support the local economy around the busiest shopping season of the year. I was so taken with the idea, being a sole proprietor and all, I wanted to find out more. Was it government-sanctioned day? A media-created event wedged in between Black Friday and Cyber Monday? With a little research, I found out that it’s neither: America

My name is Janice and I am a coupon cutter. Reading the Sunday paper, drinking my coffee and cutting out the $1 off an item normally $6 – that’s good math. Unfortunately, those little pieces of paper usually go in my glove box and never get used. All that has been completely blown away with the current coupon craze: emails delivered to your in box with huge discounts for local businesses. Think: saving 50 percent at that fabulous new restaurant in the neighborhood. Cutting yo