• Toyota Retools Its Approach To Global Markets
    Toyota's top executives are trying a difficult balancing act-- replicating the company's success and operating principles in other countries, while ceding more control at the same time. Such thinking represents not just a challenge of reconciling conflicting goals--to control and let go simultaneously--but also a fundamental shift for Toyota, where top jobs are held entirely by Japanese executives. "It's extremely important to have the same common Toyota Way infiltrated to employees in all corners of the world," says president Katsuaki Watanabe, who adds that there are "inherent characteristics" in the 27 countries where Toyota has plants that also "need …
  • Hockey Fan Buys Bauer From Nike
  • Drivers Hangs Onto Their Cars Longer
  • T-Mobile Wants Into Home Phone Market
    T-Mobile USA is launching a test of an Internet calling plan designed to replace home phone service in two markets today--Seattle and Dallas. Available only to its cell phone customers, participants must buy a $50 Internet router from T-Mobile and pay $10 a month for unlimited local and long-distance domestic calling. They can connect any home phone to the router via a traditional phone cord. The new home-phone service is an addition to T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home wireless product, which lets customers make unlimited cell phone calls at home on a Wi-Fi Internet connection, for a monthly charge of $10 …
  • Hasbro Plays Games In Hollywood
    Hasbro is embarking on a six-year, four-picture deal with Universal Pictures based on its top-selling board game "Monopoly," as well as "Candy Land," "Clue," "Ouija," "Battleship" and "Stretch Armstrong." Under the agreement, Universal will release a board-game-derived movie in 2010 or 2011, with the studio committing to release at least one film a year thereafter. The deal follows Hasbro's huge summer success with "Transformers" (worldwide gross: $700 million) and setting up "G.I. Joe" at Paramount Pictures. "Scrabble"--which Hasbro controls in North America and which rival Mattel sells internationally--is absent from the lineup included in the deal. …
  • Gillette Introducing 5-Bladed Razor For Women
    Procter & Gamble's Gillette unit is rolling out Venus Embrace, the first five-blade razor for women. It also sports a soft rubber handle and--instead of the moisturizing strip above blades on many razors--has upgraded to an oval-shaped "Ribbon of Moisture" that encircles the blades. In all, 35 patents are pending or granted covering product's technologies, designs and manufacturing. An ad campaign plays on Venus's being the Roman goddess of love, but recasts women as deities in decidedly contemporary settings. In one advertisement, a leggy woman running with a jogging stroller is the "Goddess of Trailblazing;" in another, a woman …
  • Sharper Image Files For Bankruptcy Protection
    Sharper Image Corp., the 31-year-old, 184-store chain known for its nifty gizmos and gadgets--and its ability to cause sticker shock--"is in a severe liquidity crisis," according to a Chapter 11 filing submitted to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. The company is seeking permission to shutter 90 stores and sell off inventory. In its heyday, customers would excitedly scan the latest Sharper Image catalog or flock to its stylized stores to test and tinker with thousand-dollar massage chairs or hundred-dollar headphones. The filing follows a descent sparked by a critical review of its hottest product--the Ionic Breeze …
  • Surge In Rx Drug Prices Could Backfire Politcally
    Under pressure to preserve revenue as new-drug pipelines dry up and as brand-name drugs that are no longer under patent protection lose market share to generic equivalents, marketers of the top 50 branded prescription drugs raised prices 7.8% in 2007. The rise almost doubled the overall economy's 4.1% annual inflation rate. Some individual drugs have had double-digit price increases over three years. GlaxoSmithKline raised the price of antidepressant Wellbutrin XL by 44.5% from 2005 to 2007. Sanofi-Aventis raised the price of sleep drug Ambien 70.1%. Shire increased the price of its attention-deficit disorder medication, Adderall XR, by 33.5%.,br> …
  • AGs Subpoena Marketing Docs On Alcohol Energy Drinks
  • Lillian Vernon Files For Chapter 11
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