The Good Stuff
The luxury customer gets targeted in new ways

The luxury goods industry isn’t looking too shabby these days, having benefited from serious growth in emerging markets and the buying power of vacationing Chinese. In fact, appealing to Chinese tourists has swiftly become top priority for brands like Burberry and Tiffany, both of which staffed their biggest shops with Mandarin-speaking salespeople. Chinese tourists are being treated, too, to private cocktail parties, fashion shows and personal tours. Why? Luxury [...]

In Black and White
The latest on the tiny, timely technology known as the QR code

QR (quick response) codes aren’t new (they’ve been used for years to track car parts in the auto industry), but they’re relatively new to most of us and their use is evolving quickly. After engineers realized that smartphones can serve as barcode readers, they encouraged marketers to rethink the phone as a means of instant entree to a brand’s website or social media site. Proven [...]

Driving Force
Surprising new consumer demands steer today’s auto market

Over the next two years, some 200 new or updated car models will hit the road, but many of them got their first turn in the spotlight during the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition last month. Scheduled to introduce 15 new vehicles into the Chinese market by 2015, Ford debuted several models, including three SUVs intended to accommodate China’s new fondness for roomy second cars. So-called Tiger Moms are reportedly going [...]

Ship Happenings
The 100th anniversary of Titanic’s sinking brings the ship to the forefront, again

Last month marked 100 years since the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the middle of a moonless night. The anniversary kicked off something of a revival: Historians and engineers are analyzing anew what caused the ship’s demise; still others are marveling at the survival stories. And, of course, the much-hyped 3-D re-release of the 1997 namesake film made an, ahem, splash [...]

Incredible Shrinking Childhood
“They’re growing up too fast” takes on new meaning as puberty increasingly strikes before age 10

Recent studies show, alarmingly, evidence of widespread “precocious puberty” among daughters all over the world. The average age of breast budding has fallen significantly since the 1970s, and 7 is now considered within the normal range for pubic-hair growth. As if to prove out those reports comes news of a 10-year-old girl giving birth in Colombia to a healthy daughter. Parents around [...]

Style on a Roll
Mobile commerce is evolving … from food trucks to fashion trucks

Taking a lesson from the established popularity of fashionable food trucks, the retail industry is going mobile as well—with quirky clothing and accessories stores in vehicles as varied as rehabbed double-decker buses, school buses, Airstreams and Winnebagos. See Wanderlust, which sells vintage and handmade goods in Portland, Ore., from a 1969 converted travel trailer or the Styleliner, peddling luxury accessories in a former potato chip truck [...]

Beware BFFs?
Some experts suggest that children shouldn’t have best friends

Lots of us remember grade school for the notes we passed under desks and the secrets we whispered on the playground … to best friends. But some English schools are adopting “best friend bans” to save their students from the pain of “breaking up” with a friend later on. This kind of practice is redolent of the modern day helicopter parent’s fixation with protecting their children from harm—physical, psychological or [...]

Pretty as a Picture
There’s a gender gap when it comes to physical attractiveness in the job market

It’s no secret that a pretty face can give job seekers a leg up during the hiring process, but new studies suggest that attractive men have the greatest advantage of all. Possibly that’s because HR departments are staffed predominately by women, who want to filter out potential competition, but even when it’s men making the decision, attractive men are selected over other [...]

Stop Crammin’ Me
Unauthorized charges on our cell phone bills are victimizing 20 million of us

Even though cell phone bills have always been notoriously—many would say infuriatingly—high, we may all want to check that mysterious charges haven’t been tacked on recently. Enter a deceptive practice called “cramming,” whereby a customer is enrolled in a short-message service (SMS) that delivers, without consent, texts about, say, celebrities, horoscopes, dating and weather. The FCC estimates that 20 million cell users are crammed each [...]

Songs Sung Blue
Big-voiced songbirds like Adele and Lana Del Rey are bringing back the ballad, with a twist

The late Amy Winehouse started the movement in 2006, but Adele, and now Lana Del Rey, confirmed it: The torch song is back. You know the torch song; it’s a love song that smolders with things too long left unsaid, unruly and messy around the edges. For Winehouse, it came in the form of Back to Black, her second album, which was [...]