There are few people in the world (or at least in our office) that don’t get excited when the time to order Girl Scout cookies rolls around. This week the cookies arrived and the debate began over which was the best.

Personally I’m partial to those cookies from the peanut butter family, but what you call them depends on where you are. What I call Peanut Butter Patties and Peanut Butter Sandwiches, others refer to as Do-si-dos and Tagalongs. There are few issues until the occasion that the brands flip. When that happens be prepared for an angry backlash.

There are usually two ways to make a purchase: a la carte or as a packaged bundle. Think of buying a car. Should you prefer to purchase it as a breakdown of the base car plus handpicked options or are you better off buying it as one all-inclusive bundle?

There is a simple and pretty consistent rule of thumb on the question. Here it is: unbundling or a la carte pricing benefits the buyer and packaged or bundled deals give the advantage to the seller.

As an international "travel purist," I have to admit I fall into that category that looks with disdain at those eating at McDonald’s when in another country.  “How could they possible travel this far and then eat at McDonald’s?” I would think with a certain air of superiority.

Audi Chief Marketing Officer Scott Keogh on how the company is trying to get its products in front of consumers and marketing challenges during this period of economic weakness

In this interview, filmed at the Architectural Record Innovation Conference, product designer and consultant Gary van Deursen goes back to basics. After all, products need problems

What do the following words have in common? Fare, dues, tuition, interest, rent, and fee. The answer is that each of these is a term used to describe what one must pay to acquire benefits from another party. More commonly, most people simply use the word price to indicate what it costs to acquire a product.

In the Pricing Decisions Tutorial we provided the foundation marketers use to make pricing decisions. In this part of the Principles of Marketing Tutorials we look at the process marketers follow when setting product prices. This coverage includes examination of: approaches to setting an initial price; different price adjustments marketers make before settling on a final selling price; payment options; and additional issues that affect pricing.

Marketing starts with the product since it is what an organization has to offer its target market. As we’ve stressed many times in this tutorial, organizations attempt to provide solutions to a target market’s problems. These solutions include tangible or intangible (or both) product offerings marketed by an organization.

Feeling bad about the economy? Indulge a little, have a soda.

Marketers at Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. are counting on that sentiment to appeal to consumers overwhelmed with a drumbeat of bad economic news.