By TERESA F. LINDEMAN, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Stressed-out consumers want comfort food and comfortable clothes at the right price, and the fact that they're relatively satisfied overall with what they're getting may boost holiday shopping.

The National Retail Federation is moving to get out ahead of the anticipated frenzy of Black Friday shopping by issuing guidelines to help retailers deal with crowd-control issues.

PITTSBURGH - In some ways, the Obama administration already has pulled off a marketing coup in hosting its first G-20 summit of key world financial leaders.

The team scored merely by choosing a quirky city perched on the East Coast/Midwest divide to host it.

The problem of saving the planet one purchase at a time doesn't seem to be a difficult one to grasp. Just to solve.

Consider the kitchen stocked with dolphin safe tuna, fair trade coffee and certified organic produce.

The franchisees building Sonic drive-in restaurants in the Pittsburgh region liked one potential site but there was a drawback. The owners wanted only to sell, and with lenders tightening up on credit, the franchisees weren't ready to buy.

As the consumer world continues to shift and slide alarmingly, Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Co. has strategies to keep profits going up and market share from eroding toward private label or second-tier brands.
But to hear Heinz Chairman Bill Johnson tell it, a rush to offer consumer promotions to match competitors' deals on frozen entrees isn't one of them. At least for now.

A group of Heinz fans wants to squash the H.J. Heinz Co.'s plans to take the pickle image off its ketchup labels for the first time in more than a century.
The company announced the plan last week. Within days, a Facebook page, "Save the Heinz Pickle," had been set up.

Turns out people will buy a car from a salesperson they don't like and don't even think is particularly sincere -- as long as certain lines are not crossed. Knowing just where those lines are could be valuable in the current economy.

Even FedEx Corp.'s ground distribution division in Moon, Pa., got caught up in the global skid this fall, watching average daily package volumes drop from a 4 percent growth rate over the summer to a 1 percent drop in the fall.
And that was at one of the shipping giant's best performing divisions in the second quarter.

The nation's retailers, who must be trying to figure out what they did to deserve the lumps of coal that have been landing in their stockings lately, could be setting the stage for one of the crazier Black Friday shindigs in years.