The majority of consumers in the world's richest markets say they are feeling insecure and anxious and are struggling to save. They have tightened their belts and are buckled in for a sustained period of low or no income growth - a world that feels like the 1930s or the Lost Decade in Japan.

At the end of this month, 211 million Ikea catalogs will be sent off into the world. If one lands on your doorstep, you'll want to have your smartphone handy.

On July 17, a wide range of third-party products on Amazon showed special pricing: one cent. The pricing glitch was, yet again, caused by some third-party integration and a coding error.

Aberdeen Group has published a slue of new reports from its various practices on such topics as sales and marketing effectiveness, IT infrastructure/storage and virtualization, and supply chain management.

Last year saw record revenues and employment among the world's biggest construction companies, according to International Construction magazine's Top 200 ranking, although profitability was poorer than in 2010.

In releasing its first mid-year global outlook, D+B suggests that the second half of the yer will be challenging, but there will be an overall climate of improving U.S. and global business health.

The number of pirate attacks fell sharply in the first half of 2012, led by a drop in Somali piracy, according to the International Maritime Bureau's global piracy report. At the same time, those positive numbers were offset by a worrying increase of attacks in the Gulf of Guinea.

Performance metrics for warehouses and distribution centers have steadily improved since 2003, when the Warehousing Education and Research Council first conducted its annual "DC Measures" study, says Joe Tillman, senior researcher at Supply Chain Visions and co-author of the study. Moreover, the gap has significantly narrowed between best-in-class companies and those lower on the performance scale, he says.