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By TIMES WIRES
Published July 7, 2006

World Cup fans getting their kicks on the field

Business has been good at Berlin's Artemis, but like other legal brothels across Germany, there hasn't been the huge surge from the World Cup many anticipated. The owners of Artemis hoped for as many as 500 men a day. The number has been closer to 250 - though that's twice the norm. The calculation ahead of the World Cup was simple: Hordes of fans swept up in the World Cup's party atmosphere would head to the local bordello. In anticipation, Artemis opened last fall as the most-publicized brothel in a nation with an estimated 400,000 legal prostitutes. The market was certainly there. By the time the World Cup ends, an estimated 2-million people will have visited Germany, according to the national tourism center. But those tourists appear more focused on soccer than sex. "Football and beer go well together," said Burkhard Jahn, a police spokesman in Cologne, which hosted five matches. "Football and prostitution are apparently not as great a combination."

We're winning the battle against telemarketers

The Direct Marketing Association said Thursday it will begin phasing out its "telephone preference service" because so many Americans have put their names on the government's national Do Not Call registry. The DMA had operated the service since 1985 to help consumers reduce the number of unwanted marketing calls they receive. The DMA, a New York trade group of direct marketers, said it will no longer accept consumer registration for its service starting Nov. 1.

Editor who coined term 'globalization' dies at 81

Theodore Levitt, the former Harvard Business Review editor who coined the term "globalization," has died. He was 81. Mr. Levitt, who had been battling prostate cancer, died at his home in Belmont, Mass., last Wednesday (June 28, 2006), said his son, Peter. Mr. Levitt earned fame in 1960 after publishing "Marketing Myopia," a Harvard Business Review article in which he called marketing a "stepchild" in most corporations that concentrate too much on creating and selling products. Since its initial publication, more than 850,000 reprints of the article have been sold. Levitt first used the term "globalization" in a 1983 Harvard Business Review article about the emergence of standardized, low-priced consumer products. He defined globalization as the changes in social behaviors and technology allowing companies to sell the same products around the world.

[Last modified July 7, 2006, 00:52:28]