"Paper might be the most consumer sensitive of all because it's used in packaging - and packaging is used for everything, " said Minter, who has just finished writing a book about the globalization of the waste and recycling industry.
"Typically a consumer is sensitive to the initial cost of the gadget he wants to play with, " says Jim Porter, president of Mountain View, Calif.
The Furniture Village chain - which, as a vendor of big-ticket durable goods, is particularly sensitive to consumer frugality - reported almost a thousand transactions at its 40 stores by mid-afternoon on Boxing Day, putting it on course to beat the 1, 200 sales it closed on the same day in 2011.
Sales of popcorn at the cinema are, it was suggested in a newspaper recently, a sensitive barometer of consumer behaviour.
Hardest-hit would be interest-rate sensitive stocks of consumer-goods, financing and auto companies.
With those fears having subsided, investors are returning to the sectors that traditionally fare well in strong market rallies: economically sensitive financial, consumer and material stocks.
So California's ports must compete on speed, which is increasingly important for time-sensitive goods such as fashion wear or consumer electronics.
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The country accounts for 20% of personal computer and handset demand and the Chinese consumer, Credit Suisse says, is very price sensitive.
The sector, which includes retail chains, hotels, restaurants, and media and entertainment companies among others, is extremely sensitive to conditions like high unemployment and weak consumer spending, but after enduring a bumpy ride for the last few months a rebound may be in the cards.
These markets are intrinsically price-sensitive, especially when it comes to fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs).
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Ballmer introduced its next-generation touch-sensitive table computer during his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Wednesday.
Apple rival Hewlett-Packard has done well with its line of TouchSmart all-in-one consumer PCs, which supplement a mouse with a touch-sensitive screen.
Worse, with consumer prices sticky in concert with commodity prices that are most sensitive to dollar-price movements, the beneficiaries of the money illusion tend to be the hard, unproductive assets of yesterday (think housing, art, rare stamps, and oil) that are least vulnerable to currency weakness, and which in fact do best when the unit of account is devalued.
As such, corporations across industries are struggling to earn loyalty and trust from a consumer base that is simply looking for brands to be more culturally sensitive about their particular needs and in how they communicate with them.
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Stephen Roach, chief economist of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, thinks this in turn will boost the interest-sensitive areas of the economy, such as capital investment, consumer durables and home building.
The private sector has created a variety of commercial weather products that range from specialized forecasts for weather-sensitive businesses, such as resorts and commodities traders, to those consumer-friendly weather maps seen in newspapers and on television.
What if you are a mere consumer of energy--that is, neither your job nor the value of your home is particularly sensitive to the price of oil?
The German yield curve initially steepened following a higher than forecast reading of consumer prices during March, but as selling picked up around the periphery of the Eurozone, even the inflation-sensitive two year schatz reversed course sending yields lower along the yield horizon.
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