As part of its aggressive push into tea-based drinks, Coca-Cola is evaluating whether to make a bid for Snapple, the iced tea division owned by Cadbury Schweppes, says CEO E. Neville Isdell. Coke also recently met with officials from the Coke-Nestle joint venture, Beverage Partners Worldwide, expand its palette of tea-based drinks. Snapple, which sells flavored teas, lemonades and juice drinks, is one of the world's largest bottled tea brands, ahead of Coke's entire tea portfolio, which includes Nestea, Gold Peak and recently acquired Fuze. Cadbury, the world's largest confectionary firm, is getting ready to separate its drinks …

More than half of the Toyota Prius buyers surveyed by CNW Marketing Research say the main reason they purchased their car is that "it makes a statement about me." Only one-third of Prius owners cited that reason just three years ago, according to CNW, which tracks consumer buying trends. The Prius has enjoyed sales of more than 400,000 in the United States, while most other hybrid models have struggled to find buyers. It was built from the ground up as a hybrid, and is sold only as a hybrid. By contrast, the main way to tell that a Honda …

As the retailing industry has grown increasingly competitive, Sears Holdings--the parent of Sears and Kmart--has poured relatively little capital into its stores and has cut back on marketing and other expenses. The low level of spending has been vexing for mall operators, who are dismayed that Sears has not enhanced its stores, which affects nearby retailers. "It's akin to somebody refusing to cut their lawn or paint their house," says Sean Egan, the managing director of Egan-Jones Ratings in Haverford, Pa. Sears officials respond that a little more than two years into the merger of the retailers, …

Chery Automobile, China's biggest automaker, signed a deal Wednesday with Chrysler Group that gives it a chance to realize its longtime ambition of entering the U.S. market. The first cars will reach Latin America or Eastern Europe within a year, and models should be exported to North America and Western Europe in 2½ years, says Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda. The first Chrysler-Chery export will be based on Chery's A1 compact and sold under the Dodge brand, LaSorda says. A 1.3-liter version of the A1 retails in China for about $7,100 to $7,900. The companies will jointly develop …

Chief Sustainability Officers are swelling the C-level suite, and they are not simply environmental watchdogs charged with keeping regulators at bay. The new environmental chiefs are helping companies profit from the push to go green. The titles vary, mixing and matching "chief" and "vice president," "sustainability" and "environmental." But whatever they are called, the new environmental chiefs are exploring partnerships with vendors and customers to create green products--and they have the power to close the deal. They are also getting a vote--often, the deciding vote--on product research and advertising campaigns. The environmental chiefs hail from widely disparate …

Mash-ups--the formation of a new online application from two or more Web applications or data streams blended together--are enabling people with no programming experience to create software tailored to specific purposes. Mash-ups were originally born for recreational purposes, but many businesses have embraced the concept to derive new business opportunities. For example, you may have one organization link their customer data with Google Maps to identify their geographical market penetration, while another aggregates statistical data from their accounting or planning solutions into a centralized dashboard. Two examples of mashup tools are Liferay, an open source Java …

A federal judge has refused to order Jack in the Box to pull cheeky ads that suggest rival company CKE Restaurants -- which operates Carl's Jr. and Hardee's -- uses cow anuses to make its Angus beef hamburgers. CKE sued Jack In The Box in May over two TV ads, including one in which executives laugh hysterically at the word "Angus" and another where the chain's mascot, Jack -- a man with a round clown head and pointy nose -- is asked to point to a diagram of a cow and show where Angus meat comes from. "I'd …

The "Transformers" movie that opens today will give four General Motors vehicles one of the biggest product-placement opportunities ever for an automotive company. If the flick is as huge as some people are predicting, it could help transform perceptions of GM in ways that may play out for years to come. The cars get as much screen time as many of the flesh-and-blood actors, with a particularly juicy part reserved for the new Chevrolet Camaro that's coming out in 2009. But more than that, GM has teamed up with a franchise that evokes fond memories and resonates emotionally with …

Kraft Foods today offered $7.2 billion for Groupe Danone SA's biscuit unit in a move that will add the latter's Petit Ecolier chocolate biscuits and TUC crackers to Kraft's Oreo and Ritz brands. "Kraft wants to become the indisputable leader in the biscuit market," says Alain Crouzat, a fund manager at Montsegur Finance, and they are currently weak in Europe. The purchase will make it the market leader in France, Italy and Poland. It also will "serve as a cornerstone to expand to emerging markets," according to Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld. The new unit will double Kraft's …

Narragansett was once the best-selling beer in New England, but it had become known as "Nasty Gansett" by the time Mark Hellendrung bought the rights to the brand from Pabst Brewing in 2005. The brand had "slipped almost into obscurity," over the past two decades, due, in part, to a lack of marketing. Hellendrung's approach to reviving the old favorite has been to play on nostalgia and local allegiances, while attracting new consumers. The first step was bringing back its former brewmaster as a consultant to re-create the old flavor, which had been altered. Then, shunning the days …