Does A (Consumers Planning to Pinch Pennies in Post-Recession Era) Lead to B (Library Use Maintains Strong Gains Since Start of Recession)

Yeah, it's a wordy title!

Link to March 22 Adweek post, "Will traumatized consumers ever recover?"

Excerpt:   Amid steep unemployment, it sometimes seems that half the people who still have jobs are working to figure out whether consumers will continue scrimping even after the economy recovers. A couple of surveys -- one by Ogilvy & Mather Chicago in conjunction with Communispace, the other by Booz & Co. -- add their two cents to the body of data suggesting that Americans will continue to pinch their pennies long into the post-recession era. However, the findings also give reason to think that a lasting era of "frugality" won't be one in which consumers resign themselves to lives of "deprivation."

Whether the recession has technically ended or not, consumers are in no rush to loosen the tight grip they've had on their spending. For one thing, it's not as though they're necessarily hankering to do so. In the Ogilvy report (released this month, based on polling fielded in the fourth quarter of last year), 78 percent of respondents said they believe the recession "has changed their spending habits for the better."


Survey says....it's not me responsible for this mess.

17 percent agreed that "they personally over-consumed and need to improve their spending habits."

84 percent think Americans "in general" over-consumed and need to clean up their fiscal act.