Studying the history of retail is a way of learning about the evolution of society, understanding current changes and trying to predict future scenarios. If we want to try to understand how our way of life will change, we must…

Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables is an unusual campaign, started a few years ago by the French supermarket chain Intermarché, which has already gone down in advertising history. The campaign stars imperfect fruit and vegetables ("moches" from the French for "ugly"),…

First there was the shop, perhaps small and local. Then the stores grew and moved further away. There was the shopkeeper who served us, then self-service shops appeared. Then came the explosion of the web and new technologies "dematerialized" the…

Demanding, selective, independent, competent, proactive and often not very faithful to the brand: these are the characteristics of consumers that some experts, including the sociologist Francesco Morace in Italy, now call consum-authors. A neologism created from the consideration that consumers…

Let’s put it this way: today’s media do not enjoy good press. Neither classic media – traditional newspapers – nor social media, although, to be fair, social media have enjoyed a moment of particular favour for some years. In fact,…

There is a growing awareness that there has not been enough focus in recent years on the distorting effects that digital connections and interactions may have generated. All of us, some more or less than others, suffer from a sort…

Smombies are smartphone zombies or distracted pedestrians, while the activity is known as walking while texting. It is a serious problem and this is why many cities around the world are launching initiatives to limit the damage. In South Korea…

Nearly nine million YouTube users have seen Coca-Cola's 2014 campaign about spreading the correct use of social media. With the campaign's name Social Media Guard Coca-Cola wanted to remind us that sometimes social media are in danger of "monopolizing" our…