Mark Barratt wants to see Tesco succeed in America. The British expatriate and assistant professor of supply chain management at the W. P. Carey School and his wife have lived in the U.S. for five years, and they still haven't found a one-store replacement for the U.K.'s monster chain.

Media titan Rupert Murdoch has finally succeeded in buying the company that owns the venerable Wall Street Journal. Now media experts are wondering what's next, not only for the Journal, but also for newspapers in general.

With consumers increasingly comfortable with interactive technologies such as online social networks, high-speed connections and new media tools, it's now easier than ever for marketers to connect with their customers. It is also easier than ever for consumers to ignore brand messages.

From its origin as an economical means of preserving dried fish to its current ubiquitous presence in supermarkets and five-star restaurants, sushi presents a fascinating glimpse of the rise and fall (and rise again) of Japan's modern economy and the similarly wild ride of sushi's culinary center

Telecom giant Sprint-Nextel recently decided about a thousand of its customers were just a little bit too demanding, so it went ahead and fired them. The remarkable move made headlines nationwide and since has left business analysts to ponder two questions. First, was Sprint justified?

Companies typically try to acquire the kind of customers that are immediately profitable, or show the most potential for long term value.

Michael Vick's apparent involvement in the brutal "sport" of dog fighting is the latest incident to focus attention on celebrity endorsements.

In 1997, Yellow Transportation landed in Fortune magazine's least-admired companies list. "We were a $2.5 billion company," says Greg Reid, senior vice president. "But we kept operating the same old way.

People who work in service positions — police officers, hair stylists, dentists, real estate agents &mdahs; are aware that they are on stage, playing a role, while on the job.

The supermarket sample is a familiar ploy, but those tasty bites appear to have more impact than marketers imagined.