Best Buy

The religious right’s annual “War on Christmas” is ramping up early this year, and at least one Minnesota-based company is on its hit list. Targeting retail stores that use the word “holiday” instead of “Christmas,” a trend it says the Nazis began, the American Family Association includes SUPERVALU, Eden Prairie–based owner of Cub Foods, among its targets for using the h-word in its ads.

Come March, madness isn’t reserved for just college hoops. The Consumerist, a Consumers Union blog, is seeing which corporations will earn Worst Company in America honors, based on reader voting. Local companies Target and Best Buy are in the running — and, in one case at least, aren’t faring well.

If headlines about the recession look scary, look around: There’s an emerging economic horrorscape across the land, a twilit scene of zombie banks, retail crypts and ghost cities that’s seeming less otherworldly and more familiar by the day.

Photo: Adbusters

If ever there was a year in which Buy Nothing Day might really take off, it’s 2008, as the foul economy clouds consumer confidence and impedes the Black Friday shopping impulse. But since a byword of BND, as the international grassroots anti-consumerism movement is known for short, is “Do Nothing,” Buy Nothing Day [...]

Stanley and Karen Hubbard are in a league of their own when it comes to political contributions. In the first 18 months of this election cycle the couple doled out $163,500 to federal political candidates and causes — $40,000 more than the next most generous Minnesota household. Republicans have largely been the beneficiaries of their largesse, with more than 80 percent of that money ending up in GOP coffers.

Who occupies the other nine slots in Minnesota’s Top 10 political donors? Click inside to see.

Local big-boxer Best Buy has seen its fair share of publicity woes lately. Last May, there was a major lawsuit filed in Hennepin  County against Best Buy’s Geek Squad computer-support department for allegedly stealing photos and other private materials from customer computers. Then, just a few weeks ago, another employee confessed to copying a woman’s [...]

Do blue hairs like Blu-Ray? Who cares? They’re cheap. Let’s focus on “Ray,” the bulls-eye Best Buy customer and “techno-tainment” enthusiast with a kid’s heart and wads of cash to spare. Niche marketing doesn’t get any uglier than the customer profiles created by the folks at hometown corporate behemoth Best Buy. And the good folks [...]