(United States Ninth Circuit) - In an enforcement action brought by the Federal Trade Commission, affirmed a preliminary injunction freezing the assets of companies that allegedly had made deceptive representations regarding loan modification services.

Live Nation and AEG Presents will offer refunds to ticketholders whose events have been canceled due to coronavirus.

IBM Security, Packet Clearing House (PCH) and The Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) today launched a free service designed to give consumers and businesses added privacy and security protection as they access the internet. The new Quad9 Domain Name System (DNS) service helps protect users from accessing millions of malicious internet sites known to steal personal information, infect users with ransomware and malware, or conduct fraudulent activity.

IBM and SAP SE have teamed up to provide a co-innovated solution for the retail and consumer packaged goods industries to help both increase profitability and improve the consumer experience.

Digital video consumption is viral and, according to a new study released today by IBM and International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), more than half of the 21,000 consumers surveyed are using mobiles every day to watch streaming videos, and that number is expected to grow 45 percent in the next three years.

IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) warns against a new wave of security threats during the holidays and provides guidance on how consumers and businesses can protect themselves.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the Australian results of the 2012 Smarter Consumer Study – the largest study of its kind – which looks at the purchasing trends, habits and expectations of more than 28,000 consumers globally, including more than 1800 from Australia. Over the last three years, the study has tracked the annual evolution of the ‘empowered consumer’.

ACCC had threatened legal action

Thousands more consumers have learned they are at risk in their own homes from faulty washing machines which have been added to Whirlpool’s expanding list of recalled models

Tesla's stock price sank Thursday after Consumer Reports blasted the reliability of the company's new Model 3 sedan and dropped it from a list of recommended vehicles.

Smart Summon, the feature that lets Teslas drive themselves through parking lots, is drawing increasing criticism.

New FSA guidance reassures consumers that food risks from coronavirus (COVID-19) remain low.

Where's the beef? In California, it is still available, but meat eaters might need to settle for cuts other than prime steaks. The industry is dealing with production backups caused by coronavirus pandemic.

TelcoTV released a preview of results from the annual Heavy Reading State of the Video Consumer Survey. Complete findings from the 2012 survey will be presented at the TelcoTV Conference and Expo taking place October 24 to 26, 2012 at the Las Vegas Hotel, Nevada. Aditya Kishore, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading will present the findings during his keynote address on Wednesday, October 24, 2012.

Heavy Reading’s highly anticipated State of the Video Consumer Survey, now in its fifth year, is an annual report that reveals consumer opinions about video consumption across device platforms, provider perceptions and satisfaction levels with video services. In years past, it has proven to be a valuable planning tool for any organization serving the video distribution marketplace.

The Trump administration continues its war on consumers

Despite strong growth, D2C companies are facing more headwinds   April 2, 2020 (New York, NY) — For the first time, we are breaking out direct-to-consumer (D2C) ecommerce sales. We define […]

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, you can tweet them to @danariely with the hashtag #askariely, post a comment on my Ask Ariely Facebook page, or email them to AskAriely@wsj.com. ___________________________________________________ Dear Dan, When I host friends for dinner,...

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 3, 2019 What: 4th CFPB Research Conference on Consumer Finance When: December 12th-13th, 2019 Where: Catholic University in Washington, DC In December 2019, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will host its fourth research conference on consumer finance at Catholic University in Washington, DC. Information on prior conferences can be found here: […]

The post 4th Consumer Financial Protection Bureau research conference on consumer finance, Dec 12-13, 2019 appeared first on Decision Science News.

Consumers who only make the minimum repayment on their credit card could be paying hundreds of dollars a year in high interest payments. To help, BETA partnered with the Treasury and Westpac to see if reminders could encourage consumers to pay earlier and save money. We found any type of SMS reminder resulted in a $134 (28 per cent) increase in repayments in the following month, compared to those who received no message. However, different SMS messages all had a similar impact and we were unable to detect an effect from sending email reminders. Overall, the findings suggest that sending an SMS reminder to credit card consumers before their payment due date is a simple, cost-effective way to improve their financial wellbeing.

Francisco J. R. Ruiz, Susan Athey, David M. Blei.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 1--27.

Abstract:
We develop SHOPPER, a sequential probabilistic model of shopping data. SHOPPER uses interpretable components to model the forces that drive how a customer chooses products; in particular, we designed SHOPPER to capture how items interact with other items. We develop an efficient posterior inference algorithm to estimate these forces from large-scale data, and we analyze a large dataset from a major chain grocery store. We are interested in answering counterfactual queries about changes in prices. We found that SHOPPER provides accurate predictions even under price interventions, and that it helps identify complementary and substitutable pairs of products.

Inflation pressure could be weak even after consumer demand for non-discretionary goods and services begins to grow as the economy gets back on its feet.

The University of Michigan's Consumer Survey Center questions 600 households each month on their financial conditions and attitudes about the economy. Consumer sentiment is directly related to the strength of consumer spending. Consumer confidence and consumer sentiment are two ways of talking about consumer attitudes. Among economic reports, consumer sentiment refers to the Michigan survey while consumer confidence refers to The Conference Board's survey. Preliminary estimates for a month are released at mid-month. Final estimates for a month are released near the end of the month.

The BIS's data set on consumer prices contains long monthly and annual time series for 60 countries.

Inflation pressure could be weak even after consumer demand for non-discretionary goods and services begins to grow as the economy gets back on its feet.

Bank of Italy Working Papers by Concetta Rondinelli and Roberta Zizza

Central Bank of Chile Working Papers by Carlos Madeira

In conjunction with the soft launch, Apple uploaded 10 YouTube videos that explain how consumers can apply for the credit card and use it. Sign up in the iPhone's Wallet app.

Lynn Faulds Wood, Journalist and TV presenter

Two professors propose a plan to launch a new organization that would evaluate education technology solutions and report those results to schools and ed-tech entrepreneurs.

Are you unhappy with your credit provider? Have you been given more debt than you can afford to pay back? Help is at hand, and it’s just an SMS away.

Fin24 users speak of their frustrations with banks, calling for a crackdown on debit order fraud that sees payments they didn't authorise being deducted from their bank accounts each month.

Attorney General Kathy Jennings has announced that her office’s Consumer Protection Unit has secured an agreement to recover $23,362 in debt relief for 5 former ITT Tech students in Delaware as part of a 43-state multistate settlement. The settlement is with Student CU Connect CUSO, LLC (“CUSO”), which offered deceptive loans to finance students’ tuition […]

Scammers ordered to pay thousands in restitution, barred from offering services in Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings announced Tuesday that the Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Unit (CPU) has reached a settlement with two California-based companies requiring them to stop advertising and selling mortgage loan modification and debt relief services in Delaware and to provide […]

The federal government’s newly-revamped tool can lead to increased costs. Commissioner Trinidad Navarro has released a rare consumer alert regarding Medicare’s newly-updated Prescription Plan Finder. Throughout this year’s open enrollment period, which ends on December 7, the Department of Insurance has received numerous complaints about the tool and anticipated prescription drug costs. The Prescription Plan […]

The bill has a provision for endorsers, under which they cannot be held liable for false and misleading ads if they are found to have done due diligence before signing the deal.

Smart and connected television sets have been around for some years now but the large-scale proliferation will have huge impact on the entertainment and video ecosystem.

Advertising when the customer needs your product the most is an age-old tactic for effective marketing.

Geometry Global, WPP group’s shopper marketing and brand activation agency, is working towards devising communication that fits the non-linear, omnichannel shopping behaviour of consumers.

According to a report by Nielsen, in March 2020, the demand for honey was up by 35%, for chyawanprash by 81%, and turmeric by 38% in modern trade stores

As Delawareans stock up their firewood supplies, state officials remind buyers and sellers that firewood must be sold and advertised only by cords. Under Delaware Code, firewood and stove wood must be advertised, offered for sale, and sold only by a cord measure or fractions of a cord or cubic meter. Selling firewood by truckload, rack, face cord or pile is not permitted under state law.

Delaware Grown Week – a campaign highlighting the fruits, vegetables, and value-added agricultural products produced in The First State – officially launched with a kick-off event at the Rehoboth Beach Farmers’ Market including Secretary of Agriculture Michael T. Scuse, state legislators, and other officials.