TomTom GPS Review

The hype before the holidays said social media was the new way to shop.

But recent surveys show it hasn’t quite caught on yet.

Medialo.gy said back in December that “companies have teamed up with social media to offer consumers an integrated shopping experience saving them time and anger.”

It is true, as the Pew Internet American Life Project found, that 58 percent of American adults now research online to find out about products and services.

But do they use social media?

After all, Amazon.com made it possible to deliver gift cards to a friend’s Facebook wall. And Walmart came out with “Shopycat,” an app that gives people suggestions of gifts they can give to their friends based on data it mines from the friends’ profiles.

Examiner.com suggested using Twitter and Facebook to keep track of stores’ holiday hours and specials.

But people didn’t buy into social media much this season.

The Telegraph reported that a mere 9 percent of people surveyed by Baynote said they purchased something via a retailer’s page on Facebook. The survey contrasted that with the 59 percent who said they bought a gift directly from a retailer’s website.

A survey released this week by Crowd Science found 24 percent of people went to a company’s website to find holiday shopping deals. Other favorite ways to find that perfect gift were print (15 percent), email newsletters (13 percent), talking with friends and family (9 percent) and online flyers (5 percent).

Only 3 percent said Facebook was their favorite way to find deals. Just 1 percent touted Twitter.

In a related question, the Crowd Science “shopitudes” survey found that older shoppers like online shopping more than younger folks. Shoppers 24 or younger were less likely to prefer online shopping for the holidays, compared with people who were older.

Crowd Science VP of research, Sandra

.... end of excerpt
Article Source: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700218793/Social-media-fails-to-affect-holiday-shopping.html

2. Another option is stay in your new country and spend more time getting to
know it. It’s a slight simplification, but as a rule of thumb expats
have either moved because of their career, in which case they are expecting
to move on at some time in the future, or have retired to enjoy the rest of
their lives somewhere different. In both cases there is a strong tendency to
stay put and enjoy the country and opportunities that you may only have a
limited time to experience.

3. Then there is the option to take advantage of where you are currently
living, to visit local places that normally would be out of reach. This is
the option favoured by Annabel: “From Dubai, we’re well-placed to go to
all those ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ places that most people in the UK rarely
manage to get to – Maldives is a quick trip for us, under four hours
away. Also Sri Lanka’s great for a long weekend, India’s two and a half
hours away, Mauritius, Thailand – all do-able. We also take lots of
short breaks around the UAE and Oman because it’s a brilliant tourist
destination; people pay good money to come here and it’s all on our
doorstep, so why not take advantage?”

Of course you could also do what we have done: adopt four cats (with a fifth
one currently being fostered and looking more and more likely to stay), and
give up all hope of ever having a holiday. It is slightly ironic because a
key factor in adopting our first cat was that it would force us to stop
splitting our time between the UK, US and Spain, and would bring more
normality and consistency to our life.

Little did I know what an obstacle they would become. If I had a euro for
every time I said

.... end of excerpt
Article Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/8630481/The-expat-holiday-dilemma.html