Despite the country's gloomy fiscal forecast, Walt Disney executives say bookings for the rest of the year at its parks and resorts division continue slightly ahead of last year. Investors have been concerned that the slowing economy would affect vacation travel. CEO Robert A. Iger says the company's resort business is better positioned now than in past recessions. In 1991, for example, more than 55% of hotel rooms at Disney World were considered premium priced. Now, about 75% of rooms there are considered moderate or value priced, he says. Moreover, Disney has made its parks more affordable to …

A new Chrysler incentive plan called "Let's Refuel America" allows buyers of most Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicles to sign up for a gas card that will reduce the price they pay to $2.99 a gallon at the pump for three years. While other automakers have in the past offered fuel savings plans, Chrysler's program is much wider in scope. It is national and covers most of the lineup. Chrysler is struggling to stimulate demand for its vehicles. Of the three Detroit automakers, it is the most dependent on sales of large vehicles, and it has suffered the biggest sales …

The prospect that United and US Airways might combine pleases Gary C. Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines. He says that the prospect of the two hub-and-spoke carriers cutting back flights to reduce costs--as well as the likelihood that such a merger could result in a period of operational chaos--would give Southwest an opening to seize yet more market share. To politicians who worry that domestic competition would suffer if United and US Airways merged, Kelly says, "We can put those fears to rest." He says Southwest would quickly move in to expand service. Neither US Airways nor United spokespeople …

A slew of tiny car companies is springing up in Europe and the U.S., all of them betting that soaring demand for fuel-efficient vehicles will allow them to survive alongside the giants of Detroit, Stuttgart and Tokyo. The upstarts are working on a new generation of hybrid and electric vehicles. Most of the companies were founded in the last 12 months and have financial backing from venture-capital firms. They are headed by former top engineers and designers from the likes of Germany's Volkswagen AG and storied UK racecar builder McLaren. Many of the green start-ups are hoping to …

There's an enigma to the storied Toyota Production System, which aims to get as much as possible out of every part, every machine, and every worker: Although the system has been widely copied, Toyota has kept its edge over its competitors. How has Toyota stayed ahead of the pack? The answer has a lot to do with another distinctive element of Toyota's approach: defining innovation as an incremental process, in which the goal is not to make huge, sudden leaps but, rather, to make things better on a daily basis. The principle is often known by its Japanese name, …

When asked to identify the five most important attributes of a successful chief marketing officer today, 65% of respondents to a survey of more than 200 senior-level marketing executives by Spencer Stuart cites an ability to influence the bottom line. Strategic orientation (44%) and customer orientation (33%) were the next most-frequently quoted attributes of a winning CMO. It wasn't so long ago that many marketers were touting ad recall or brand awareness as their major goals. "It reflects the pressure that marketers are under today to be more accountable for business results and more closely linked with the full …

High-profile stances on social causes can have unintended consequences as "ethical marketing" encourages consumers and activists to delve into corporate policies in ever-greater detail. Procter & Gamble and Unilever have become lightning rods, in part because of their stances on environmental and social issues. Case in point: Unilever has scored at the top of global ethical and sustainability indexes in the past year. Its reward was to be labeled by Greenpeace, along with its global Dove agency, Ogilvy & Mather, and some UK PR firms as killers of Indonesian orangutans because it buys palm oil from former rain forests. "Most …