Major fast food and coffeehouse chains are launching special discounts and promotions aimed to keep customers streaming in during the hot days and months ahead. Who says “happy hour” has to be limited to bars and restaurants that serve alcohol?
The annual event known as Free Comic Book Day is held the first Saturday in May every year—May 5 in 2012. It’s a day when comic book shops all over North America give away free comics to each and every customer. It’s also a huge day for selling comic books.
Ever dream of taking off on the open road for a footloose and carefree trip around the country? Then don’t try to drive cross-country in an electric car. Don’t try to break the record for best gas mileage either.
A fast-food chain that’s named after a song about marijuana by “Wild Thing” rapper Tone Loc? That sells “blunt” sized sandwiches, each of them named for a different strain of ganja? And hemp brownies listed on the menu under “Incredible Munchies” (desserts)? It sounds like the makings of an old “Saturday Night Live” sketch, perhaps [...]
Target started selling Amazon‘s line of Kindle e-readers two years ago. Head over to Target.com now, though, and you’ll discover a wide assortment of e-readers, but not a single Amazon Kindle for sale. Kindles are being taken off the shelves at Target’s nearly 1,800 stores as well, as the retailers’ battles over “showrooming” and brand [...]
Airline fees and a la carte pricing for flights may be highly annoying to passengers, but it’s also proving to be a highly profitable business model. Spirit Airlines, the “low-cost” carrier at the forefront of fees—since 2010, it’s charged upwards of $45 each way per carry-on bag—now averages more than $100 in fees per passenger [...]
Technically, these cars aren’t new. None of them would be described as high-powered or sexy either. They all fall into the unexciting category of the family/commuter car. Still, Honda, Chevy, and Dodge are going to unusual lengths to try to make these run-of-the-mill cars become runaway successes.
Millennials are often viewed as “game changers” in the auto industry. Over the next 10 years, it’s anticipated that 40% of new cars sold will be purchased by Gen Y consumers. That’s assuming Gen Y consumers actually wind up owning cars at all. Perhaps that’s not the safest assumption to make.
Whereas the average consumer may find the creep of advertising to be, well, creepy, advertising insiders see unexpected brand and product placements not as intrusive, but as innovative, often brilliant.
Tyler Cowen is an economist who teaches at George Mason University. He has written economics columns for the New York Times, published what the Economist called “the most talked-about economics book of the year” in 2011, and was praised recently by Foreign Policy as one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” The man is [...]
The concept of customized, more relevant daily deals has been around at least since Groupon began talking about it two years ago.
