New research by the UK’s leading discount website has found that more than two fifths of the British public that own store cards felt ‘pressured’ into getting them.

A new poll of 1,659 people by www.MyVoucherCodes.co.uk has looked into people’s attitudes to store credit. When asked ‘do you have a store card of some description?’ more than a third of the respondents, 34%, claimed that they did. Of these, 62% were women and 38% were men.

Of those who did have a store card of some sort, only 39% said they willingly signed up for it, whilst 42% claimed to feeling ‘pressured’ into doing so. The remaining 19% said they were ‘tricked’ into it and didn’t realise what they were signing up for, having been promised in-store discount in return for signing up.

Of those that didn’t have a store card, more than half, 51%, said they had refused one ‘10 or more times’. Two thirds, 66%, of the store card owners said they were ‘in debt’ from using credit whilst shopping.

The study also revealed the common misconceptions of store cards, with 3 in 5 admitting they were unaware of the interest rates before signing up. 59% thought store cards enabled them to ‘shop now, pay later’ without having interest added at any point on top of their spend.

When www.MyVoucherCodes.co.uk questioned the respondents that claimed to have been ‘tricked’ into getting a store card, 81% thought it was just something that would give them a discount.

12% claim to have signed up to a store card in order to claim a discount before immediately destroying it. 81% of store card owners said they often spent money they usually wouldn’t if they didn’t have the credit.

Farhad Farhadi, personal finance expert at http://www.MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, said;

“As a discount website, we are keen to help consumers save money. Sales staff in shops often lead customers into a false sense of security by getting them to sign up to a store card, which they say will give them a discount on their spend. The customer hears the word ‘discount’ and is often automatically sold on the idea.

“People should think carefully before signing anything, as this is the sort of thing that can lead to a string of debts. A store card is essentially a credit card, but I think many fail to see it that way. There’s nothing wrong with getting one of these cards, providing you can keep the payments under control and not spend more than you know you can afford to pay back.”

LINK http://www.MyVoucherCodes.co.uk

END

For further information please contact Shannon Haigh, of 10 Yetis Public Relations Agency on 01452 348 211, [email protected]

EDITORS NOTES

Mark Pearson, MD of MyVoucherCodes is a regular media contributor regarding online shopping and the credit crunch. At 29, his personal worth is more than £30 million. Mark was previously a trainee chef working for Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, London.

MyVoucherCodes has had sales exceeding £481m in the last year

Consumer savings on online shopping via MyVoucherCodes.co.uk up from £28m in 2008 to £52m in 2009.

MyVoucherCodes is the UKs most popular discount site.

Research by the UK’s leading discount website has found that just 24% of Twitter users want to see promotional tweets in their feed, with 68% admitted to being ‘unhappy’ with the development.

Twitter.com founder, Biz Stone, yesterday announced on the Twitter blog that the company was unveiling ‘promoted tweets’ as a means of monetising the popular 140 character service, with initial partners including Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America, with ‘promoted tweets’ by these companies set to appear in search pages on the social networking site.

A study of 1,219 people was conducted to gain feedback about the tweeted advertisements by city deal website, www.Groupola.com, and has found that initial feelings about the marketing move are not positive.

One quarter, 24%, of UK Twitter users said they were ‘happy’ with the move, compared to 68% that said they were unhappy with the fact their Twitter experience would start to include commercial tweets. The remaining 8% said they were interested to see how the commercial inclusion would play out.

Despite the number of users that said they were unhappy with promoted tweets, when asked the question, “in what other ways, besides promoted tweets would Twitter be able to monetise?”, 74% of Brits admitted that they ‘didn’t know’.

17% said they thought Twitter could monetise by having the site ‘sponsored’ by brands in regional areas, providing them with targeted location-based brand promotion depending on the region the user is in when they sign up. Just 2% said they thought Twitter could charge users to use the service.

Mark Pearson, Managing Director of Groupola.com had the following to say,

“The Twitter team have clearly had some difficulty coming to terms with the fact that to survive, they have to monetise. It’s as simple as that.

“Twitter really is the media’s social networking darling, and for something this big to have been valued at $1bn and go on existing without some form of revenue stream is unwise and has been baffling for all other entrepreneurs.”

He continued,

“I believe this could work out very well for Twitter, and should help the investors start to see a return on their money. As with any change, there will be resistance for a short period of time, but I think the level of loyalty Twitter users show will soon outweigh the negativity surrounding the move.

“From an online business perspective, it will be extremely interesting to see how well the initial brands fare through their promoted tweets, as I could definitely see the idea of promoting our daily city-specific deals through Twitters as a viable marketing option to aid in the promotion of group buying discounts.”

http://www.Groupola.com works because of ‘group buying power’, a new-to-the-UK way to save money, that will give users the ability to save money on restaurants, spa days, beauty and hairdressing, experience days, sport and leisure activities, theatre, concerts and much more.

LINK http://www.Groupola.com

ENDS

For more information, please contact Rich Leigh, 10 Yetis Public Relations Agency on 01452 348 211, [email protected] or on Twitter @goodandbadpr

EDITORS NOTES

Overnight, Groupola.com became the biggest Group Buying Power website in the UK when it launched in February

Groupola.com operates in 8 of the largest cities across the UK, including London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff and Edinburgh.

Mark Pearson, MD of MyVoucherCodes is a regular media contributor regarding online shopping and the credit crunch. At 29 his personal worth is more than £30 million. Mark was previously a trainee chef working for Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, London.

MyVoucherCodes has had sales exceeding £481m in the last year

Consumer savings on online shopping via MyVoucherCodes.co.uk up from £28m in 2008 to £52m in 2009.

Research by one of the UK’s leading discount websites has found that 74% of women have lied about their size, with the majority of women claiming to be one size smaller than they are.

The average woman in the UK is a size 14, according to a recent study of 1,201 females – yet 59% said they had told friends and colleagues they were one size slimmer than they actually were, whilst 1 in 3 regularly lie about their weight. Three quarters of women said they’d lied about their weight.

The anonymous research, commissioned by the UK’s leading discount website www.MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, which provides discount voucher codes for fashion retailers including ASOS, Wallis, Quiz and more, found that just 12% of women had never lied about their size or weight.

When asked, “What size are you?”, the majority, 24%, of women said they were a size 14, whilst just 1 in 5 said they were a size 10 or under.

Here are the percentages of women with relation to their size:

Under Size 8 – 4%

Size 8 – 7%

Size 10 – 9%

Size 12 – 21%

Size 14 – 24%

Size 16 – 14%

Size 18 – 13%

Size 20+ – 8%

Of the 88% of women who had lied about their size and weight in the past, 53% said they lied about their size and weight because they were embarrassed, whilst a third had lied to a date or partner in a bid to impress them.

92% of women admitted that they had ‘body concerns’ with regards to weight and size – with 85% saying they’d like to lose weight. Of those who said they would like to lose weight, just 31% said they were exercising or eating healthier.

A third of women said they had clothes in their wardrobe that no longer fitted them that they hoped to fit into again in the future.

6% of those asked said they had told people their dress size in American sizes to make them sound slimmer.

All of the fashion discount codes on MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, including 20% off all orders on ASOS are listed here: http://www.myvouchercodes.co.uk/fashion-women/discount-vouchers.

Mark Pearson, Managing Director of MyVoucherCodes.co.uk had the following to say,

“Weight is always a tricky subject, being such a personal issue to many.

“The fact that just 12% hadn’t lied about their weight or size is indicative of just how big an issue it is to people. It’s also interesting to note that so many women say they’d like to lose weight, yet just a third are doing anything about it.”

LINK http://www.myvouchercodes.co.uk

ENDS

For more information, please contact Rich Leigh, 10 Yetis Public Relations Agency on 01452 348 211, [email protected] or on Twitter @goodandbadpr

EDITORS NOTES

Mark Pearson, MD of MyVoucherCodes is a regular media contributor regarding online shopping and the credit crunch. At 29 his personal worth is more than £30 million. Mark was previously a trainee chef working for Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, London.

MyVoucherCodes has had sales exceeding £481m in the last year

Consumer savings on online shopping via MyVoucherCodes.co.uk up from £28m in 2008 to £52m in 2009.

MyVoucherCodes is the UK’s most popular discount site.

Shenzhen, China – December 15th, 2009 – Wondershare, a leading provider of training and presentation software, this year at Christmas is back again with its huge offers up to 50% off on all of its training and presentation software. The offers are valid until 20th of December, 2009.

Christmas is the best time to gather people together and make the big sale. Focusing on people who need promote their products online and attract more traffic by video advertisements and presentation, Wondershare now is offering an easy way of spreading information and getting more marketing opportunities for all of them with inappreciable cost. As always, Wondershare is dedicate to providing high quality yet easy-to-use video presentation tools for families and individuals, offering the maximum possibilities for people to share laughter and tears of the year to parents and friends.

“Wondershare provide presentation and authoring software that fit all kinds of users. People can generate their own videos for training, presentation, celebration and business purposes within minutes. “Said Wondershare Marketing manager Sabrina, “Christmas will be ideal for your video creating experience.”

Most programs at Wondershare will be given a bargain discount during the sales. Besides, there’re three more combo packs for specific customers with up to 50% off.

Christmas Presentation Pack: PPT2Flash Professional + PPT to eCard + PPT2DVD

~ Create product presentations for Christmas holiday promotion
~Create your product advertisement from PowerPoint and delivery it with DVD/play it on TV
~ Build Christmas eCard to enhance the relationship with your customers

Christmas Training Pack: PPT2Flash Professional+ QuizCreator+ DemoCreator

~ Create Flash Training Courses from PowerPoint
~ Make attractive trivia quizzes to enhance your assessment experience
~ Record what onscreen activities to make guide demos

Christmas Gift Pack: PPT to eCard + WebVideo Author + PPT2DVD Lite

~ Create animated eCards and send to friends and families
~ Produce fun Christmas video clips and share your happiness
~ Build ice-breaking quiz games and have fun creatively

About Wondershare

Wondershare Software is an industry-leading learning and training software application provider. As the professional developer of e-Learning authoring tools, Wondershare is dedicated to providing easy-to-use programs for learning content authoring. Wondershare E-Learning has served thousands of organizations from Stanford University, US Air Force to Siemens AG with preferred solutions. For more information, please visit: www.sameshow.com

Contact:

Amada Qin
Wondershare Software
Tel: +86-755-86117747
Fax: +86-755-86117737
Email: [email protected]
Address: A901,9/F,Building A,TCL Plaza,Gaoxin Ave.1.S.
Nanshan District, Shenzhen
Guangdong, 518057 P.R. China

SOURCE Wondershare Software

“ZORG Ukraine” announced the beginning of new unprecedented discount program. Since the fore-coming year 2010 is associated with the symbol of white tiger, and thus with virtues of courage and luck, Ukrainian construction company offers unique benefits for everyone who decides to build a biogas plant before December 31, 2009.

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