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☆ Costco cracks down on membership card sharing
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-27 | by ( Melissa Repko | In Melissa-Repko | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The retailer is cracking down on people sneaking into its clubs and trying to shop with other people's membership cards, it said Tuesday. Costco said it has always asked shoppers for their membership cards at the cash registers when they check out. Now, it is also requesting to see cards with a photo at self-checkout registers — and to view a photo ID if a shopper's membership card has no picture. The membership-based warehouse club said it has noticed more abuse of card sharing since it expanded self-checkout to more of its stores. Membership-based warehouse clubs have attracted more customers and won more of their wallets over the past three years.

Persons: Costco, Richard Galanti Organizations: Costco, The Dallas Morning News, Shoppers, Walmart, Sam's

☆ Temu reportedly thinks shoppers should be blamed if they buy goods from the site that were produced by forced labor
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-23 | by ( Jennifer Ortakales Dawkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Online retailer Temu relies on its customers to report when products are made with forced labor. Temu prohibits suppliers from using forced labor, but relies on external reporting to enforce that policy. Lawmakers said there is an extremely high risk that Temu's supply chains are contaminated with forced labor. That makes it difficult to know whether the companies are following the Certa Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which prohibits international imports manufactured by forced labor, particularly in the Xinjiang region of China. The investigation concluded that, "American consumers should know that there is an extremely high risk that Temu's supply chains are contaminated with forced labor."

Persons: —, Temu, hasn't Organizations: Temu, Lawmakers, Service, Chinese Communist Party, Customs, Border, Labor Locations: United States, Xinjiang, China, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, American

☆ Amazon lets users buy alcohol with its palm-scanning payment system
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Annie Palmer | In Annierpalmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Amazon is adding a feature to its palm-based payment system that will allow users to buy alcohol by swiping their hand. The system, called Amazon One, lets people pay for items by placing their palm over a scanning device. To purchase alcohol, users have to upload a government-issued ID on the Amazon One website, the company wrote in a blog post on Monday. To start, the Coors Field baseball stadium in Denver, Colorado, will let attendees use Amazon One to purchase alcohol, Amazon said. Amazon One and other payment systems that use biometric data have faced some pushback from privacy advocates.

☆ Flights from the US to Europe are going to be incredibly expensive this summer — here's why
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-12 | by ( Bianca Giacobone | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

There's high demand for international summer travel and likely not enough seats to satisfy it. Americans have their eyes set on international travel — and Europe especially. If you want to fly to Europe this summer, you're likely going to spend $300 more than you would have before the pandemic. Last year, it was flights within the US that had their most expensive summer in years, averaging $376 round trip. "Next summer for international will be less expensive than this summer and probably start returning to some level of normalcy similar to what happened with domestic," Berg said.

☆ US airlines thrown a curveball as consumer habits change post-pandemic
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Rajesh Kumar Singh | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Even as the thirst for travel remains strong, the changing trends are driving up airlines' operating costs and hurting revenue. Travel demand has also softened on days in the middle of the week, but has strengthened on peak days. Frontier Airlines (ULCC.O) decided to slash flights on Tuesdays and Wednesdays by about 20%, citing weak demand. Delta Airlines (DAL.N) reported that bookings for trips inside 30 days were declining, while those outside 30 days were stronger. Last year, it denied boarding to more customers than American Airlines (AAL.O) and United, U.S. Transportation Department data shows.

☆ Gen Zs don't have a lot of money, but they're traveling anyway
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Monica Pitrelli | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Gen Zs aren't easing into the travel market — they are exploding into it. Source: Morning ConsultYet unlike past generations, Gen Zs aren't waiting until they have high-paying jobs or a nest egg of savings to travel. Rather, "they are finding ways to fit it into their budgets now," according to Morning Consult's report on Gen Z travel trends. Only 11% Gen Zs who travel frequently come from households earning $100,000 or more annually, according to Morning Consult. Gen Zs and millennials also want — and will shell out more for — pools and pet-friendly accommodations, according to Hopper's "2023 Travel Trends Report."

☆ 2023's 'Clean 15': These are the fruits and veggies with the least pesticides—and how to include them in your daily diet
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Renée Onque | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

You may have heard of the "Dirty Dozen," but what about the "Clean Fifteen"? Just as fruits and vegetables with the most pesticides are listed, non-organic produce items with significantly less pesticide residues are also ranked by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization that primarily focuses on making the environment healthier. Each list in EWG's 2023 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce is based on federal data of over 46,000 samples of 46 fruits and vegetables that were tested for pesticides. Unlike strawberries and spinach, which topped the "Dirty Dozen," avocados and sweet corn landed the top two spots in the "Clean Fifteen." Pineapples and cabbage also made the list.

☆ Here's why travel to Europe is no longer a 'screaming, bargain-basement' deal
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Greg Iacurci | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Not all European countries use the euro — it's the official currency for 20 out of 27 European Union members. By the end of September, Americans could buy one euro with just 96 cents. "Europe for much of last year was a screaming, bargain-basement deal for Americans," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. International trips account for about 56% of search demand among U.S. travelers, up from 46% last year, according to travel app Hopper's Consumer Travel Index published in February. Foreign travel for Americans is still a bargain.

☆ Meet the typical CVS shopper: a white, Gen X, college-educated city dweller earning a high income
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Dominick Reuter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

CVS's average customer is a white, urban Gen Xer earning a high annual income. Numerator found that CVS's typical shopper is a white, urban Gen Xer who has a college education and an annual income of more than $80,000. In addition to OTC pain medication and cough remedies, the typical retail shopper often prefers to buy candies, chocolates, and bottled water. Just 1.6% of a CVS shopper's total dollars are spent at CVS, compared with 6.8% of their spending on Amazon. At other retailers, the CVS shopper buys more fresh garlic, hand sanitizer, bar soap, and non-dairy milk alternatives than the national average shopper.

☆ Google Flights will pay you the difference if a ticket gets cheaper after you book — here's how to use the new tool
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Hannah Towey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google Flights launched a "price guarantee" program for some flights departing from the US. If you buy an eligible ticket and the price drops afterward, Google will pay you the difference. Through its new "price guarantee" pilot program launched in April, Google Flights promises to pay travelers the difference if their ticket price drops anytime after booking. If your ticket price drops anytime between booking and take-0ff, you'll receive a notification after your first flight. Within 48 hours, the difference should be deposited in your Google Pay account — just make sure to use the same email for Google Pay and Google Flights and download the Google Pay app.

☆ 2023's 'Dirty Dozen': The 12 fruits and vegetables with the most pesticides—and 4 tips for enjoying them safely
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Renée Onque | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

We're often told to avoid unhealthy foods like sugary cereals, but there are some fruits and vegetables that should also be met with caution. Certain pesticides have been linked to health issues like birth defects, miscarriages and developmental disabilities in children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states. The EWG analyzes data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration to rank non-organic produce with the most pesticides every year, and has done so since 2004. For their 2023 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce, the EWG used data that tested over 46,000 samples of 46 different fruits and vegetables. Blueberries and green beans joined the "Dirty Dozen" this year, while strawberries and spinach reclaimed their No.

Online searches by Americans for flights to Europe trips are surging despite soaring air fares, a worsening economic outlook and risks of gridlock at some of the airports in Europe. The travel boom is promising record profit margins at some U.S. carriers, which are ramping up transatlantic capacity to cash in on Americans' thirst for travel to Europe. Travel website Kayak said searches for travel to Europe this summer are up 77% from last year. There is still untapped travel demand for Europe even after a busy summer last year, said Hayley Berg, lead economist at Hopper. Average fare for a round-trip flight to Europe, meanwhile, has risen 31% from last year, Hopper data shows.

☆ Kroger knows every purchase you've ever made – and says it could make millions of dollars selling your data
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Grocers like Kroger are gathering consumer data and selling it, The Markup reported. Kroger says that selling the data to advertisers could help it realize $1 billion in new profit. But the information, even without names attached, could violate customers' privacy. Both Kroger and Albertsons say that they give aggregate "de-identified" shopper data to their clients. Kroger, for instance, touts its data set on Hispanic consumers, among other "ethnic panels," on the website for its marketing arm.

☆ Spring break gets pricey as travelers return to old booking habits
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Leslie Josephs | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Spring break travel demand is picking up, driving up airfare and hotel rates. Airlines, grappling with pilot shortages and aircraft delivery delays, have already limited capacity growth, which is keeping airfare up from last year. Now travelers are going back to booking patterns common before the pandemic, flying on peak days to traditional destinations, airline executives say. That makes it even more important for travelers to stay flexible if they're trying to save money to avoid spikes in fares. Spring break demand is "probably the best we've ever seen," Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle said in an interview.

☆ The typical Home Depot customer is a 45-year-old white man with a college degree earning over $80,000
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Dominick Reuter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Half of US shoppers are Home Depot customers, and the store has similar customer loyalty as Costco. The store's average customer is a middle-aged white man with a college degree earning over $80,000 per year. Numerator found that Home Depot's typical shopper is a middle-aged white man, who is married without children at home. About 3.3% of the typical shopper's overall spending takes place at Home Depot — about a third of what they spend at Walmart, where they spend the most of their shopping dollars. Home Depot carries between 30,000 and 40,000 different products, but the typical customer's favorite products to buy are building supplies, fasteners, paint (from Behr), and lawn and garden supplies (from Scotts).

☆ How to snag discounts through Beni, an online shopping tool that hunts for resale deals on Poshmark, eBay, and The RealReal
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Danni Santana | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Beni, a browser extension, helps shoppers curate resale listings while browsing retail sites online. BeniShoppers are required to download the Beni extension on Google Chrome or Safari. Then, they must enable the extension while shopping online to view resale listings. "So let's say you find a Patagonia jacket that you really love, we'd show you 20 jackets often that are exactly the same from places like eBay or The RealReal," Pinner said. In return for real-time listings data, Beni markets new resale items to customers as they shop outside of their platforms.

☆ Meet the typical Whole Foods shopper, a highly educated West Coast millennial woman earning $80,000
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Dominick Reuter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Whole Foods' average shopper is a West Coast woman who is 29 years old and earning $80,000 per year. Numerator found that Whole Foods' typical shopper is a West Coast millennial woman between 25 and 34 years old. About 5% of the typical shopper's spending takes place at Whole Foods — about half of what she spends on Amazon. Whole Foods shoppers also tend to choose the store's in-house 365 brand, as well as Organic Valley dairy products and Applegate meats. Across all retailers, Whole Foods shoppers buy a lot more kombucha than the typical US shopper.

☆ Meet the typical Costco shopper, a 39-year-old Asian American woman earning more than $125,000 a year
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Dominick Reuter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The wholesale club has similar customer loyalty as other big box stores, and it adds more new customers than it loses. The average Costco customer is a 39-year-old Asian American woman who's married and earns $125,000, Numerator found. The store operates as a wholesale club, with nearly 119 million cardholders representing households and small and midsize businesses. Roughly one-third of US shoppers are Costco customers, according to data from the analytics firm Numerator prepared for Insider. The typical customer visits Costco on a weekend day every two weeks or so — about 30 trips per year — and spends about $100 per trip.

☆ An 81-year-old brain doctor's 7 'hard rules' for keeping your memory 'sharp as a whip'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Richard Restak | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Neglecting your brain health can make you vulnerable to degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. As a neuroscientist, I've spent decades guiding patients with memory problems through brain-enhancing habits and exercises — many of which I practice, too. Here are seven brain rules I follow to keep my memory sharp as a whip:1. Eat brain foods. Get in the habit of converting anything which you find hard to remember into a wild, bizarre or otherwise attention grabbing image.

☆ I made more than $877,000 in revenue last year selling emotional-intelligence card games online. Here's how I built my business.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Vartika Puranik | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Jenny Woo is the founder of Mind Brain Emotion, which sells emotional-intelligence card games. But in 2018, I quit my job at the Montessori school and founded my company, Mind Brain Emotion, where I sell practical card games on emotional intelligence. I used Amazon Ads to bid on keywords that consumers used to search for similar productsA bid is the amount of money you're willing to spend toward a keyword or advertisement. I did more market research between fall 2018 and February 2019, and another card deck was born, 52 Essential Relationships, in March 2019. I went backward to move forward in my business because I recognized that in order to have genuine conversations, trust and understanding are prerequisites.

☆ 33 years ago, the US Army's elite Delta Force pulled off its first successful hostage rescue mission
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Stavros Atlamazoglou | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Early on December 20, 1989, Delta Force operators descended on a Panamanian prison holding a CIA operative. But it was also the first time that Delta Force successfully completed a large-scale hostage rescue. In the months prior to the mission, the Delta operators practiced the mission multiple times. Once inside the cell, the Delta operators gave Muse a helmet, body armor, and goggles for protection before heading back to the MH-6s. A few minutes later, armored personnel carriers, carrying Delta operators and medics from the main invasion force, rescued them.

☆ Brandy Melville owners to pay $1.5 million settlement to thousands of employees over claims they worked 'off the clock' and without breaks
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Kate Taylor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

In 2021, Brandy Melville employees described racism, Hitler memes, and exploitation to Insider. Thousands of former employees of controversial fast-fashion retailer Brandy Melville are receiving checks in the mail this holiday season. Alec, who worked at Brandy Melville from 2013 to 2014, received a settlement check for $162 in late December. Over the last year, Brandy Melville has opened a number of new locations, including its second store in Australia. "I'm surprised that Brandy Melville hasn't closed down or had more people boycott them," Emily said.

☆ Analysis: Retailers turn to robots in cost inflation fight
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( James Davey | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

He estimates the retail industry is 40% automated, but sees that jumping to 60-65% over the next three to four years. The march of the robots can be seen in fashion stores and food shops globally as an industry that employs millions grapples with the cost of rising wages, energy and raw goods. While processes at online retailers are largely automated, vast parts of a traditional retailer's operations are still carried out manually, according to consultants at McKinsey. Looking at the fashion industry, McKinsey expects fashion companies to double investment in technology from 1.6% to 1.8% of their revenue in 2021 to between 3.0% and 3.5% by 2030. "Retailers are saying 'robots are the future,'" Michel Spruijt, Brain Corp's chief revenue officer, told Reuters, adding that the shift could "free up workers from tedious" tasks.

SYDNEY, Nov 28 (Reuters) - When Melbourne barista Melinda Elliott had to cut back on casual work shifts this year, she asked her buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) provider, Afterpay, to lower her credit limit. "There was no email to say, 'your credit limit's gone up again'; it was out of nowhere," said Elliott by phone. The absence of interest charges has exempted them from consumer credit regulation, and the sector's business has grown strongly during an online shopping frenzy spurred by COVID-19 stimulus payments and ultra-low interest rates. If they come under regular consumer credit regulation, they will also lose their main competitive advantages. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission, which oversees the Credit Act, told Reuters it was "supportive of the BNPL sector being subject to regulation".

☆ Flights just before Christmas cost 39% more this year and it might only get more expensive
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Brady Macdonald | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Friday before Christmas is shaping up to be one of the busiest travel days of the year. More than half of Americans plan to travel during the Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday seasons this year, according to Hopper. The most expensive days to travelWith Christmas falling on a weekend, the Friday before and the Monday after the holiday will be the most expensive days to fly, according to Hopper. With New Year's Eve also falling on a weekend, January 1 and 2 will be the most expensive days for return flights, according to Hopper. Expect to pay a premium for Christmas travel if you book in December with more connections and undesirable flight times, according to The Vacationer.

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