Best Buy if offering a year of Sprint service free to students when they buy a new smartphone. The Sprint and Best Buy partnership gives students 12 months of free unlimited talk and text as well as 1 gigabyte of data per month. Students have the option to pay $10 per month to get unlimited data. Students have to be enrolled in a U.S. school from elementary to college, or an accredited institution.

Porsche selling an SUV? Not a few people howled "sacrilege" when the Cayenne hit the road (some probably felt the same way about the Panamera salon.) To prove it has proven its detractors wrong, and to make some more money in a new segment, the company has introduced its first compact utility, the Macan ("tiger" in Indonesian Malay, and "house" in Hindi, for what it's worth.)

Papa John's International said Friday that it is searching for a new national advertising agency of record, as ZGroup, a division of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based Zimmerman Advertising, has chosen not to defend the account now up for agency review. John Schnatter, Papa John's founder and chief executive, said in a statement that the chain needs fresh ideas. Who doesn't.

Reynolds started marketing Vuse vapor cigarettes in Colorado in July and plans to expand it to "an additional geography" in January, according to Stephanie Cordisco, president of R.J. Reynolds Vapor. She did not name the specific geography, but noted that Vuse will have a national footprint in the first half of 2014.

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers is rolling out premium-price burgers it has been testing for the past year. The rollout, under a new banner called "Finest line," starts with Finest Smoke & Pepper Signature Burger. It's a half-pound Black Angus beef patty seasoned with alderwood-smoked sea salt between a pair of buttered, toasted ciabatta buns serve as bookends. The chain said the burgers would be menu priced from $12.99 to $14.29. Most burgers on its standard menu are priced from about $9 to $10.50.

Jaguar and Mini buyers win the J.D. Power 2013 U.S. Sales Satisfaction Index (SSI) Study. Jaguar ranked first among luxury buyers with a score of 740 points followed closely by Porsche (739) and Lexus (737). Among "mass market"vehicles, Mini topped the chart with a score of 718, which was a six-point jump compared with the previous year. It's the fourth consecutive year the brand has finished atop the list. Volvo experienced the biggest jump from year-to-year gaining 30 points to 708 and moving from 11th place in 2012 to ninth this year.

Both Kohl's and Costco would be better off keeping their doors closed on Thanksgiving because their customers aren't going there anyway during the holidays. The Placed survey found warehouse stores underindexed in visitation, meaning they don't have much to gain by opening ahead of Black Friday. By comparison, the study found most off-price department stores among the merchants we're willing to visit on Thanksgiving.

Some marketing terms are amorphous, overused, and deceptive. Use "value exchange" instead of "engagement"; "celebrities," "managers," and "moms" are pretty good examples of words you should use instead of the term "influentials" coined by Malcolm Gladwell who also coined "tipping point," which should be bound, gagged and thrown overboard; don't get blind-sided by "loyalty" because the people to whom it applies are not all that valuable as share builders; and "unique" because it's not as important a proposition as one might think.

Native advertising accounts for an average 20% of total current publisher revenues, with publishers expecting it to represent as much as 30% within a year, according to the State of Native Advertising 2014 report from Hexagram and Spada. Blog posts (65%), articles (63%) and Facebook (56%) are the most popular forms of native advertising.

Valet parking, ice rinks, language assistance, rides, and free coffee are among the freebies malls are dangling to get people to shop there during the holidays. Every major shopping mall must try to "distinguish its position as a destination" for holiday shoppers, and few things work better than free gifts and services, says Steven Keith Platt, director of Platt Retail Institute.