My mom and I both love to grow corn. There's something amazing and magical about those tall wavy plants and the ears that spring into physicality before your eyes. It's American as can be; the cultural significance is as mysterious and nuanced as crop circles. And, according to my favorite garden...

Call it opportunism, playing to weakness, or just marketing to pissed-off people: Targeting your competitor's customers after an unpopular move, one like that made by Netflix earlier this month, is kind of a no-brainer. NPR's Marketplace Tuesday called it "anger marketing." And Blockbuster knows...

There'll be no more focus on french fries and soda as the founding tenets of the kid's meal faith, say competing press releases from McDonald's and the National Restaurant Association (NRA). OK, maybe soda. But french fries will be taken down a notch. In a roundly lightweight move to stave off...

We want to be someone else. This, according to author Rachel Shteir, is why we shoplift. I say "we," because of the dozens of people with whom I've discussed this topic over the years, only one or two insist they've never shoplifted. The number of reported shoplifters, according to the National...

Shopping at the grocery store isn't always a walk in the park. You're bombarded with offers that seem to be a bargain -- but could just be a bust. As an example, let's look at two end-of-aisle advertised specials on sale at two different grocery stores. For the sake of argument, let's say you have...

Earlier this month, an Oak Park, Mich., woman came face to face with the prospect of hard time for the crime she'd committed: nurturing tiny baby pea pods, little baby zucchinis, and sweet, juicy tomatoes in her front yard. I know! Young people these days. I'm shaking my head, too. Ninety-three...

I have to laugh every time I see someone writing an article about the 10 or 15 or even 20 "must have" items for a baby. Typically, these lists start with heavy, large, relatively expensive products that most children outgrow within a few months, and they finish with the little things you can pick...

Six dollars. This is what had the internet boiling yesterday. Six dollars a month, or just less than 20 cents a day. As someone in my Twitter stream raged: "Here's a quarter...now shut up." But for the thousands of Netflix subscribers upset about the decision by the...

Albertson's, a Southern and Western U.S. grocery chain, has had enough with self-checkout lanes. Albertson's is pulling its do-it-yourself lanes in about half of its 217 company-operated stores to make way for regular and express employee-operated lanes. (The 450 stores operated by SuperValu get to...

I'd been waiting for a biggish freelance check for a while and making lists of things my family needed when the money came it. So when I got it, I had some shopping to do: new organic bath towels; a new mattress and (very important given my kids' ages and self control) a top-notch protective...