Students soon will be headed back to school (BTS), and more than one-third (37%) of consumers already have begun their BTS shopping—up from the 29% who started at this time last year. Roughly 90% of households indicated a selection of brick-and-mortar retail as a shopping venue for the BTS season, according to a new International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)-Goldman Sachs survey conducted this month by Opinion Research Corp. 

Consumers will shop in a variety of places for their BTS items this year. While discounters are still expected to be the winners, the number of households selecting this shopping venue dropped from 90% last year to 80% this year. For all 2014 BTS shopping venues, discounters represented a 23.7% share of where consumers will shop. Many retailers in regional malls and open-air centers should see increased activity during this season.

Students soon will be headed back to school (BTS), and more than one-third (37%) of consumers already have begun their BTS shopping—up from the 29% who started at this time last year. Roughly 90% of households indicated a selection of brick-and-mortar retail as a shopping venue for the BTS season, according to a new International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)-Goldman Sachs survey conducted this month by Opinion Research Corp. 

Consumers will shop in a variety of places for their BTS items this year. While discounters are still expected to be the winners, the number of households selecting this shopping venue dropped from 90% last year to 80% this year. For all 2014 BTS shopping venues, discounters represented a 23.7% share of where consumers will shop. Many retailers in regional malls and open-air centers should see increased activity during this season.

The Perfect Wave has been nominated for three awards at the 6th Annual Pan Pacific Film Festival for Best Feature Narrative, Best Editing and Best Cinematography. Winners will be announced at the festival July 24-26 in Los Angeles. 

Starring Scott Eastwood (Gran Torino, Flags of Our Fathers), Rachel Hendrix (October Baby) and Cheryl Ladd (Charlie's Angels), the film opened in select markets July 11.

Facebook is now testing a new feature to help businesses drive sales through the site in News Feed and on Pages.

With the feature, people on desktop or mobile can click the “Buy” button on ads and Page posts to purchase a product directly from a business without leaving the page they’re on and without leaving Facebook.

Liguori Publications, a Catholic publisher and Redemptorist ministry, has purchased Catholic Update and many other parish resources from Franciscan Media. Liguori will continue to provide those resources to parishes and looks to expand its reach among parishes. The purchase is part of a collaborative agreement that enables both companies to use their strengths to better serve Catholic parishes and individuals. Financial details were not disclosed.

Under the agreement, the Catholic Update newsletter and Catholic Update on Demand, the Faith Formation Update newsletter, and Bringing Home the Word lectionary-based resource, as well as related books, videos and other products, joined Liguori’s parish resources and solutions.

Yancy’s Little Praise Party app is getting a bilingual upgrade with the addition of songs from her new Spanish-language children’s album, Pequeña Fiesta de Alabanza! (Elevate Entertainment/Syntax Distribution). The app, available for free for iOS and Android, encourages praise sing-along fun on the go.

For the first time this month, Yancy’s Little Praise Party app is featuring a song in Spanish, with plans to feature songs in English and Spanish every month going forward. 

Amazon.com introduced on July 18 Kindle Unlimited—a new subscription service that allows customers to read as much as they want from more than 600,000 Kindle books, and listen as much as they want to thousands of Audible audiobooks—for $9.99 a month. Amazon is offering a free 30-day trial for the service.

Subscribers also get a complimentary three-month Audible membership, with access to the full selection of Audible titles. Kindle Unlimited is accessible from Kindle devices or with Amazon’s free Kindle reading apps.