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Advances in telecommunication technology have contributed to the popularity of smartphones and social media websites worldwide. There are 196 million smartphone users in the U.S., and worldwide, smartphone users were estimated at 1.75 billion in 2014. These increases are signs of how widely social networking companies have penetrated the lives of ordinary people and, in turn, transformed the ways in which people communicate and businesses operate. In essence, social media sites and smartphones have become very useful and integral tools for marketing and consumerism. This paper explores trends, challenges and opportunities in social media marketing and its benefits to consumerism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the impact of industry characteristics such as research and development, capital intensity and labor productivity on the export performance of U.S., Japanese and German firms. The study utilizes ordinary least squares multiple regression and samples of the top 1000 publicly listed manufacturing companies by those countries from 2001 to 2005 in which samples were matched on the basis of industry type. Findings, as well as the implications of the study are cited.