A Tale of Many iPhones
The initial fanfare of last week’s Apple announcements has subsided and the debate has moved from what will be announced to which device consumers will purchase. What we have seen so far from data...
Automotive
The Impact of Severe Weather on the Nation’s Energy and Automotive Aftermarket Industries
Being a resident of Katy, Texas (a suburb about 20 miles west of downtown Houston), I found myself right in the middle of Hurricane Harvey as it made landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast at the end of...
Connected Intelligence
Peering at the Edge of Mobility
This year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) Americas is, in many ways, a story of edges. Smartphone manufacturers, such as Apple (which doesn’t need to actually exhibit to show its importance), Essent...
Connected Intelligence
Apple Watch Finally Broke Free with LTE
While the smartwatch is still not a mass-market device, with roughly 9.5 percent penetration among U.S. adults as of the middle of 2017, Apple has certainly been doing its part to push the categor...
Sports
Sneakernomics: What Sports Retail Can Learn from Fast Fashion
Given this current malaise in the U.S. sports business, it is important for the industry to look across the retail landscape for ideas on how to improve its current condition. The world of fast fa...
The X Factor
Tomorrow, Apple is expected to launch its next generation iPhone. Assuming the anticipated announcement becomes a reality, this will mark 10 years since Apple entered the smartphone market and fundame...
Sports
Sneakernomics: Small is the New Big
In a recent blog post, The Future Looks PUNY, I outlined that many of the success stories amidst today’s retail malaise have centered on the ideas of Premium, Unique, New and Young (PUNY). These n...
Foodservice
Pizza Hut Delivers in the Flood
I'm a Houston resident and like most Houstonians I've been battling flood waters all week. One of the things I’ve been amazed by during Harvey is just how good the food industry is. Retail shelves...
Totally Wireless Earbuds Bring the Loud to Stereo Headphone Sales
So far, 2017 has been a great year for headphones. Through July, U.S. dollar sales and average prices increased 22 percent, and 18 percent, respectively, over the same period a year ago. A number...
Sports
Sneakernomics: What the Nike Amazon Deal really means for the Sports Industry
A lot has been written about the “pilot program” that Nike agreed to sell direct to Amazon, much of it filled with misconceptions and errors. Let’s try to set the record straight. Probably the gre...
Baker’s Dozen: A View into the Future of Consumer Tech Holiday 2017 and Beyond
Each year around the holidays, NPD provides what we have come to call the Baker’s Dozen - a list of 13 predictions for the holiday season, as it relates to technology products and retail tren...
Video Games
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner: How Microsoft is looking to heat up holiday competition on console
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is the most popular and best-selling entertainment property you may have never heard of. It may also be one of the most important games releasing in the console space thi...
Apparel
The New Look of Back-to-School
This back-to-school shopping season is a clear reflection of changing times. Besides the season starting earlier and ending later, back-to-school shopping now includes more options for the consume...
Food Consumption
A New Take on Health and Wellness
It’s that time of year when I gather and review all of the food and beverage and foodservice research we’ve conducted over the past year and begin compiling the next annual edition of Eating Patte...
Sports
Sneakernomics: No, Athleisure is not Dead
With the disappointing quarterly results from some of the major sports retailers, there has been a renewed cry that the athleisure trend is over. While recent results for athleisure have been chal...
Beauty
Pulling at Our Heartstrings
I am a proud Millennial. I look fondly on memories of playing with my Skip It, being obsessed with gel pens, playing MASH with my friends to find out what my future would hold, and having what see...
Sports
Sneakernomics: Second Quarter Performance for the U.S. Athletic Footwear and Activewear Markets
The calendar was kinder to the second quarter than the first, but challenges still remain in the athletic footwear and activewear space. While the overall Q2 sales trend (April-June) in athletic...
The Power of a Back-to-College Connection
Excitement and happiness are present for many of today’s back-to-college shoppers, but they also report feeling stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed, especially as moving day gets closer. Combined ...
Beauty
Are Beard Oils the New Aftershave?
As a kid, I used to watch my dad shave his face. I especially loved it when he would clap his face with aftershave, look into the mirror and say, “Damn, I’m handsome,” signaling the completion of ...
Apparel
Personalizing Prime?
We recently welcomed Alexa into my family through Amazon’s latest virtual assistant option, the Echo Show. She claimed prime real-estate on the kitchen counter thanks to her new seven inch touchs...
Sports
Sneakernomics: The State of the Outdoor Business
The overall state of the U.S. outdoor business has not been very good. According to data from NPD’s Retail Tracking Service, dollar sales are down year-to-date through May 2017 compared to the sam...
Retail
4 Calculations for Retail to Study This Back-to-School Season
The back-to-school shopping season has gotten trickier to focus in on as a retailer. The shifting dynamics at play, from channel blurring to consumer needs, have created a very different back-to-schoo...
Toys
You’ve Heard of KGOY, But What About AGYO?
I’m sure many of you have felt this same feeling as I have… I might look older on the outside, but I feel like I’m still 25 on the inside. I’m a grown woman with teenagers, but sometimes I want to...
Sports
Sneakernomics: The Future Looks PUNY!
There has certainly been a lot of bad news for the U.S. sports industry recently. We cited the dramatic slowdown in the sneaker purchases by Hispanics, as well as a pessimistic prediction for back...
Toys
Back-to-School: Friend or Foe to the Toy Industry?
It’s hard to think about the topic of back-to-school when my kids just wrapped up school only two weeks ago here in New York. But, alas, we at NPD have already started to talk about it as retailer...
Foodservice
What’s Really Happening With Independent Restaurants?
I’m very privileged to get to travel this great nation each week and share data and insights about food and beverage consumption trends. While it’s my job to share what I’ve learned from studying ...
Prime Day Showing Its Age
With Amazon’s now annual summer buying event upon us, we’re looking back at the past two years to evaluate the impact of Prime Day to tech vendors, to Amazon’s tech business, to Amazon’s Kindle/Ec...
Fashion Accessories
Branded Logo Tees - The New “It Thing”?
Fashion trends are a funny thing. Whether it’s mom jeans or bomber jackets, rompers or Birkenstock’s, you never quite know what the next “in thing” will be. Well earlier this week as I was on my ...
Sports
Sneakernomics: Athletic Footwear and Activewear Back-to-School 2017 Predictions
I am more pessimistic today than I was in December about the short-term prospects for the U.S. athletic footwear and apparel markets. Late last year, my expectation was that 2017 would be an average y...
Automotive
Shifting [Generational] Gears
The automotive aftermarket will see a complete transformation of its core consumer over the next 10 years. Millennials, who have now surpassed Baby Boomers as the largest living generation in the U...
Apparel
Entering the World of “Spashion”
Eight glasses of water…check. Ten thousand steps…check. Whole grains…check. From clean eating to athleisure makeup, the idea of living a healthy lifestyle is here to stay and making its presence k...
Beauty
The New Age
Recently, my mother broke both of her wrists and had casts from her hands to her elbows for two months. One of her main concerns was her nightly ritual of potions and lotions that my step-father w...
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