High-end enclosed retail spaces, like the Short Hills Mall in New Jersey, are doing just fine, thank you. However, like Sears, Kmart and J.C. Penney, which used to anchor them, the middle-class shopping leviathans are beached. Since 2010, more than two dozen enclosed shopping malls have been closed, and an additional 60 are nearing death, according to Green Street Advisors. "It is very much a haves and have-nots situation," said D. J. Busch, a senior analyst at Green Street.

Verizon Communications Inc. is courting AOL for acquisition or joint venture with an aim toward mobile-video, say sources. Nothing is formal yet, but Verizon apparently likes AOL's programmatic advertising technology, which the sources said could support a future online-video product from Verizon. And the real closer: Verizon would also get The Huffington Post.

A week before its official unveiling at the 2015 North American International Auto Show, Chevrolet pulled off a surprise, giving a small group of reporters a first, brief glimpse of the second-generation Volt plug-in hybrid. While the unexpected preview at the Consumer Electronics Show revealed a significant shift in styling, Chevy officials withheld specific details, including the range and fuel economy of the 2016 Volt.

That might be the only way to describe it. It's either a mutation, a hallucination, or how the two-headed Taks from Andromeda wash their zirconium-encrusted tweezers. And it is also maybe the first washing machine in years that really is different. LG unveiled the new "Twin Wash Machine" at CES. It's a washing machine with a smaller washing machine that rolls out underneath. But you really have to see it (at the jump) to get how weird it is. And it has WiFi!

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which starts tomorrow, will have drones, connected cars and smart-home technology. There will also be Quantum-dot televisions, which promise better color and lower electricity use in giant screens. Sony and LG are pushing ultra-high-definition television, or 4K, including light-emitting diode technology for super-thin TV sets. But how many will actually become hits? The number of exhibitors totaled 52,326 last year, rising from 51,236 in 2011.

A study by StellaService finds that people who buy online and pick the product up at a store spend more time at the desk expediting the pickup than do regular shoppers who are buying their product the old-fashioned way. The study found that in-store-pickup shoppers spend 58% of their time at the checkout desk (3.1 minutes on average) versus 15% (1.1 minutes) for in-store shoppers.

In June, Pinterest started testing promoted pins from Nestle, General Mills, Kraft, Gap, ABC Family, Expedia and Lululemon. Now the social channel is expanding the program, letting advertisers pay to promote their pins with a native-advertising approach, where those images will look like regular pins. One might mistake an ad for a post from a regular user because the ads will be geo-, behavioral, and demographically targeted.

After nearly a decade of rapid sales growth, Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor Group could be facing a slower 2015, per Chung Moon-koo, the chairman of the group that controls both Hyundai and its Seoul-based affiliate, Kia. He forecasts the group will see its slowest growth in a decade as it deals with increased competition and a weaker global economy.

Last year, movie attendance in North America slipped to its lowest level in two decades: about 1.26 billion consumers purchased cinema tickets in 2014. That's the lowest since 1.21 billion in 1995, and a notch ahead of 1994 (1.24 billion). The last time admissions fell below the 1.3 billion mark was in 2011, when only 1.28 billion people went to the movies.

The global ad, which launched Jan. 1, sees Ashton Kutcher "break up" with a slice of pizza and look to the gum brand in order to get rid of lingering food and protect the health of his teeth. The ad comes at the same time as a GBP15 million refresh of Extra in the UK, as Wrigley's Orbit gum is being rebranded under the same name in an effort to tap into Extra's sales success.