More people are ‘Liking’ or sharing shopping items or links with their social media followers than forwarding them to friends via email, recent research shows.

A Responsys study of top online retailers finds that their use of ‘email-to-a-friend’ or ‘forward-to-a-friend’ via email has declined 15 percent since 2009, while the use of buttons and links enabling consumers to share with their social media network has increased by 12 percent.

When it comes to the most popular categories among daily deal website users, florists, malls, restaurants and day spas top the list, according to Scarborough Research.

According to Scarborough Research, local businesses most likely to benefit from targeting daily deal site users are restaurants, general retail stores, local specialty stores, health and fitness businesses, and automotive repair and servicing businesses.

One in five U.S. consumers (22 percent) are using digital media such as email, text messaging and Internet sites to get household coupons to help them save money on products and services.

Despite the popularity of online coupons, however, they aren’t the most popular source of savings coupons. Not yet, anyway. In fact, Scarborough Research finds that Sunday newspapers are the most popular source of household coupons, followed by retailers themselves and good old fashioned mail.

Here’s more ‘mixed evidence’ over the benefits of daily deal sites for local businesses. July 2011 research reveals that while nearly two-thirds of U.S. businesses had run a profitable promotion on daily deal site, Groupon, 82 percent were unhappy with the level of repeat business generated by the promotion.

The research, conducted by Cooper Murphy Copywriters, also found that while only 35 percent did not make money from their Groupon promotion, most noted that Groupon users were more price-sensitive than the average customer. All in all, out of the survey of 300 businesses:

Online retail sales reached $37.5 billion in the second quarter of 2011, an increase of 14 percent over Q2 2010, according to comScore.

The rise in ecommerce spending represents the seventh consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth and the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

Car buyers prefer good-looking websites, and are more likely to be satisfied with automotive websites with attractive colors, low visual clutter, well organized content, large fonts and minimal links, according to research by J.D. Power and Associates.

J.D. Power and Associates’ ’2011 Manufacturer Website Evaluation Study’ measured the usefulness of automotive manufacturer websites during the new-vehicle shopping process. In the May 2011 study, 10,400 new-vehicle shoppers were asked evaluate websites in four key areas: appearance, speed, navigation and information/content.

The days of a life insurance sales person coming to your home or office and selling you life insurance may be slowly coming to an end, if a new study by LIFE Foundation and LIMRA is any indication.

The organizations’ ’2011 Insurance Barometer Study’ shows that while two thirds of consumers (64 percent) still prefer to buy life insurance from an insurance or financial professional, that number is down from 1996, when 8 in 10 (80 percent) preferred to buy the product face-to-face.

The most popular shopping category among daily deal shoppers is food and dining. A recent survey by PriceGrabber finds that U.S. online consumers most frequently search for food and dining daily deals, followed by shopping deals and then entertainment and events deals.

According to PriceGrabber’s May 2011 survey of 2,088 U.S. Internet users, the top local daily deal search categories are:

U.S. households save around $150 per year in consumer rebates, with the rebate industry ‘saving’ U.S. consumers around $8 billion in 2010.

In its report ‘Shopper Trend Report: Values, Deals & How Far They’re Willing To Go To Get Them’, incentive company Parago also finds, among other things, that:

Almost 6 out of 10 U.S. consumers (59 percent) plan to use daily deal websites to buy holiday or special occasion gifts during the 2011 holiday season, according to a recent survey.

The ‘Local Deals Survey’, conducted by PriceGrabber, also reveals that of this 59 percent, 60 percent will use daily deal sites for Christmas or Hanukkah gifts, 56 percent will use them for birthday gifts, and 23 percent will use them to buy anniversary gifts.