American Express has released "new trends and insights into consumer spending patterns including some surprising purchasing decisions and trade-offs being made at the point of sale. The publication, Harnessing the Opportunity, from the American Express Business Insights group, provides a unique view of trends developing based on aggregated consumer spending data over the past three years." This is an especially powerful tool in today’s environment because it’s based upon actual behavior and actions—not what people say they’ll do, think they should do, or recall that they might have done. A sampling of the findings includes: Consumer spending was affected more...

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