Shopping bags at Disney theme parks are generally overstuffed with Mickey ears, Dumbo stuffed animals and Little Mermaid outfits. Soon, though, those bags—at least the ones at Disney World—may be packed with plenty of non-Disney merchandise.

Disney World’s Downtown Disney is getting a revamp and expansion that is scheduled to be finished in 2016 and will result in a change of name to Disney Springs and a total change of sensibility. It will feature “uniquely Disney venues coupled with high profile third parties” and will mean the end for nightclub spot Pleasure Island, Fox News reports. Instead, Disney Springs will get a makeover that will include “Spanish revival architecture amidst a retail setting with waterfront dining.”Continue reading...

Coca-Cola has been getting very serious about its "Open Happiness" campaign. Now it may even be ready to try to beat swords into plowshares—or at least into vending machines.

Ad Age reports that a big announcement "is coming soon" about a "major project" for the brand, possibly involving vending machines that will virtually connect consumers in India and Pakistan, two countries that long have had sectarian, sometimes bloody, differences. As depicted in a teaser video that Coke released in December, the machines would use video technology so that users in the two countries could see each other and "touch hands virtually," the magazine reported.

"The idea," Ad Age continued, "is that it could roll out to various countries in conflict."Continue reading...

The most famous fashion doll in the world, Barbie, is currently taking offers for her Dreamhouse Malibu mansion. Now, Mattel has issued an open invitation to literally step inside her world with Barbie The Dreamhouse Experience.

Two life-sized houses—complete with pink elevators, a walk-in “glitterizer” and a “diamond” ring display—will open next month in south Florida at Sawgrass Mills and for European fans, in Berlin, Germany.

Why Germany? It turns out that Barbie has roots in the country. American businesswoman Ruth Handler is credited with the creation of Barbie for her daughter, who in the 1950’s, like all little girls, had only paper dolls or baby dolls to play with. Handler convinced her husband Elliot, a co-founder of Mattel to create an adult-bodied doll based on a German doll called Bild Lilli. Barbie made her debut in 1959, followed by the reveal of the original Barbie Dreamhouse in 1962.Continue reading...

Want to master your Porsche driving skills in the toughest of weather conditions? The automaker is promoting its 2013 Porsche Driving Experience classes with winter workshops "in the far north of Finland at temperatures of up to 30 degrees below zero, on specially covered snow tracks or a frozen lake prepared exclusively for Porsche." If you're going to learn about controlled drift, you might as well do it on specially prepared ice circuits, right?

BMW this week launched a concept called Future Retail with the grand opening of its first new BMW Brand Store in a luxe pocket of metropolitan Paris this week. It also signalled that the brand is stepping up investments in its dealers and retail network to better equip them to win BMW's worldwide fight with Audi for luxury-vehicle sales leadership — and in the United States, with Mercedes-Benz for upscale-segment supremacy.

The Brand Store aims to be more than 'just' a brand experience or halo outlet. Much more important to BMW strategically will be how it executes the Future Retail concept in its dealerships worldwide. Among other things, the brand plans to increase the number of contact points with customers and prospects, increase the services and benefits offered in its retail channels, and enhance the retail experience "at all touch points."Continue reading...

When Google realized that most folks like to actually check out a laptop computer in person before laying down their hard-earned cash for it, the California-based company started thinking about opening its own retail outlets.

Well, the wait is over and the company has opened its first store (called, appropriately the Chrome Zone), but it is quite a few miles from the store’s Bay Area headquarters. It is, instead, a “store within a store” in central London — a pop-up boutique, if you will — according to the London Evening Standard.

The 285 sq. ft. pop-up store within the Currys and PC World superstore on Tottenham Court Road  “only sells Google’s (Samsung) Chromebook laptop and a few accessories such as headphones” and “will run for three months up to Christmas,” the Standard notes.

A second Chrome Zone location will open this week (Oct. 6th) at a PC World superstore in Essex. “We’ve put a lot of effort into making it feel welcoming, homely and, dare I say it, Googley,” said a company spokesperson in a statement. "It is our first foray into physical retail,” said Arvind Desikan, head of consumer marketing at Google UK. “This is a new channel for us and it's still very, very early days. It's something Google is going to play with and see where it leads."

The San Francisco Chronicle compares these retail efforts to those being put forth by Microsoft, which currently has about a dozen stores and plans to have about 75 across the globe by 2014.

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Apple stores have been getting a lot of buzz lately, so it comes as no surprise that the video above is taking off on YouTube. From the fake apple stores in China to today's green light for a splashy new location in New York's Grand Central Station, Apple fans and observers have the brand's retail experience top of mind.

Cue the "Apple Store Challenge" video, which now boasts more than 100,000 views on YouTube. But instead of an Apple store fake-out or take-out, it's actually an ode to Cupertino's computing giant, underscoring the high consumer perception for Apple's customer service.Continue reading...