In the early 2000’s, finance companies got in trouble for targeting young people with gifts like pizza and free t-shirts in order to get them to apply for credit cards with high interest rates and big fees. These fee-heavy accounts made it easy to turn a small debt into a very large debt, leaving some college students bankrupt before they could start their careers. In 2010, the U.S. made it illegal to give free gifts for credit card applications. Since Continue reading
Nursing has always been a challenging career, but the COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented levels of stress, fatigue, and burnout. More than 100,000 nurses left the workforce during the pandemic — the biggest staffing drop in 40 years. The shortage will only worsen as the U.S. population ages and experienced nurses start to retire. Government estimates show that there will be more than 190,000 new openings for nurses every year through 2032. As hospitals look for a solution to chronic understaffing, Continue reading
Do you live within five miles of a Walgreens? If you’re like almost 80 percent of the U.S. population, the answer is yes. The Walgreens Boots Alliance has grown its pharmacy chain into a massive conglomerate since Walgreens’ founding in 1901. Less than a decade ago, it officially became America’s largest drugstore chain with more than 13,000 stores all the way from Norway to Chile, Alaska to Thailand. Its stock was so successful that the Dow Jones Industrial Average chose Continue reading
Although online shopping has been the norm for decades, oftentimes consumers still want to visit a physical store. Whether it’s trying on different sizes, comparing colors and styles, or simply browsing, there are some shopping activities that people prefer to do in person. When the pandemic upended supply chains, retailers responded by cutting back on the amount of inventory that went out to individual stores. Instead, they centralized inventory at distribution centers to make it easier and cheaper to respond Continue reading
When Match.com first launched in 1995, many users were wary about meeting strangers off of the Internet. The popularity of online dating steadily grew over the years, though, with the concept becoming more mainstream after 2013 when Tinder launched its famous “swipe” mechanism. Now it’s very common to find a love interest online. Today, one in 10 people with partners say they met their current partner on a dating site or app. That number is significantly higher for the lesbian, Continue reading
This year, AI firms flocked to buy Super Bowl commercials, hoping to make a huge splash about their new products in a cost-effective way. A 30-second spot during Super Bowl LIX cost about $8 million, which may seem like a lot to pay for a short ad. Given that the massively popular game drew in more than 200 million viewers, however, a commercial’s cost-per-viewer actually amounts to less than a nickel. It’s incentives like these that motivated Google to use Continue reading
TikTok turned its service back on for U.S. users after a 12-hour shutdown earlier this month, but the popular video-sharing platform is still blocked from American app stores while it faces legal uncertainty. That means people can’t download or restore the app if it gets deleted. As a result, unlocked cell phones that come preloaded with the popular social media video-sharing app have become a hot commodity on resale sites like Ebay and Facebook Marketplace. In many cases, sellers are Continue reading
When online reviews first started in the late 1990s, shoppers used them to compare their purchases with each other instead of relying on the seller’s description or an expert recommendation. Directory sites like Yelp and Trustpilot grew their user bases by incentivizing contributors to leave authentic reviews for restaurants, doctors, and just about any public-facing business. But online reviews created a new problem: fake reviews. Businesses hired brokers to recruit people to write false reviews — either positive ones to Continue reading