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Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD), a retailer whose competitive colleagues include Target (NYSE: TGT), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), wants to improve its brand equity and find a new path to growth. As such, it's willing to employ all kinds of initiatives, especially ones that will form a nice image with the consumer during this dreadful economic contraction.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Sears is trying out a program that offers protection against the risk of investing in an expensive appliance during a time when job security is not as secure as it used to be.

The program will run for a specified time period beginning next week, and the basic gist is this: buy an appliance priced $399 or higher on a Sears credit card and, and if you lose your job, Sears will credit one twelfth of the cost every month. Still no job after one year? Keep the appliance, your debt will be forgiven.

Kroger, the nations largest grocery chain, will be reporting its fiscal first quarter earnings tomorrow before the market opens.

The current slowdown in consumer spending has actually played into the hands of Kroger (NYSE: KR). Households have been cutting back on dinners at restaurants, and looking for cheaper ways to feed the family. As a result, grocery sales are up, and for Kroger, its name brand products have also been on the rise.

Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY) has seen resurgent competition from mass retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT); are the employees of either retailer better? Best Buy seems to think so. Some of the newer advertising indicates that Best Buy employees are better at helping customers than Wal-Mart employees.

Although Wal-Mart has greatly enhanced the consumer electronics sections of its supercenter locations in the last 18 months, do the employees really know the ins and outs of all the new technology? Wal-Mart seems to really want to step up its competitiveness against Best Buy and others, but does it have the backbone to do so outside of just the products?

During a recession, people try and find ways of cutting expenses. Consumers buy less and marketers reduce their ad dollars. These trends are still continuing. TNS Media Intelligence reported that advertising spending fell 14.2% to $30.2 billion in the first quarter and up from the 9.2% in the last quarter of 2008.

As with all data, there are people on both sides of the numbers. Sir Martin Sorrel, WPP chief executive said that advertising market is getting worse. In contrast, Maurice Levy, chief executive of Publicis, the French marketing group called the bottom in the ad market. He said:" the fall in advertising expenditures should be over."

It has been a busy week in the world of sports business, with several stories vying for the spot as the big story of the week. That said, let's take a look at the news that surfaced.

First, Manchester United Football Club (that's soccer ladies and gents) announced that it will replace American International Group on its shirts with Aon in 2010. The agreement is called a basic 20-million-pound-a-year rights fee. Supposedly, the soccer team received bids from three or four different companies, but settled on Aon. Supposedly the deal includes Aon paying commissions to the club from the sale of insurance policies to the club's fan base along with match-related bonuses. It appears that Manchester United will make an extra five million pounds a year from this deal.

In an interview with Reuters, Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) reported that it expects sales in China to gain 10% in 2009. "This is one of the times when I love being in the food business. This is a market that, whatever happens in the economy, people still eat. And we have a range of products to serve everybody's needs," explained Lorna Davis, the company's president of operations in China. "Opportunities here are just huge," she added.

The projected 10% sales growth for 2009 roughly corresponds with Kraft's 2008 sales results in China. The food firm plans to maintain its healthy pace of expansion by way of a 20% boost to advertising spending. "If you want to build your business here and you don't spend more than 10 percent of your total revenue on advertising, you are not going to grow," asserted Davis.

If you compare last month to May 2008, then Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) looks pretty shaky: the American auto maker posted a 24% dip in sales year over year. However, the picture starts to look a lot better once you compare April and May of this year.

All in all, Ford sold 161,197 vehicles last month in the U.S.. Yes, this was 24% off the pace it set last year at this time, but it does mark a pretty impressive 20% jump over its numbers during the previous month, as the company was able to take slight advantage of its competitors' financial woes.

The radio business has been struggling lately, to say the least. Traditional, terrestrial radio hasn't found a way to successfully box out competition from Sirius XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI), internet streaming radio, iPods, and other sources.

Plus fewer people are in their cars driving to work lately, so the ratings numbers are down. Not to mention the monotonous nature of much of today's music (or maybe I'm just old . . . get off my lawn, you Jonas Brothers, you!)

It's no surprise, then, that the radio advertising business recently saw its worst quarter in history. The Radio Advertising Bureau said yesterday that combined national and local ad spending dropped 26% to $2.8 billion during the last quarter. Network radio dropped 13% to $238 million while off-air revenue receded 12% to $264 million.

Back in April, I wrote about Wood Allen's decision to file a lawsuit against American Apparel (AMEX: APP). Woody was upset because his image appeared on company billboard that were up for less than one week, and he wanted $10 million in damages. I thought the figure was laughably high and American Apparel lawyers said they did too -- but today The New York Times reports that the matter has been resolved:

On Monday morning, as a trial was set to begin in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Allen announced that he had accepted a $5 million settlement in his lawsuit against American Apparel and Dov Charney, its founder and chief executive. The settlement means that Mr. Allen, who had initially sought $10 million in the trial, can avoid a trial that could have dredged up potentially salacious details about the filmmaker and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) took many of the chin when it released Windows Vista over two years ago when it received as many panning reviews as possible for the world's largest software company. Since then, the software behemoth has been planning a Vista successor that is leaner, safer, and doesn't require the latest PC to provide optimum performance.

That being said, the rumor is that the new Windows 7 will be available for sale and on new PCs sometime at the beginning of 2010. According to one of Microsoft's chief Windows engineering leads, the world could see Windows 7 sometime this summer.

When anti-traditional media company Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) indicated it would go on television to promote its Chrome web browser, I was befuddled. Why on Earth would the king of new media (and associated revenue) want to go to an age-old format to promote one of its most important products? Chrome, which was just released during the second half of 2008 and thus has barely any market share, seemed oddly-placed when it was released anyway. Does the world really need another web browser?

It seems that every month I get a new phone book. Yet, I haven't opened one in the past few years. Of course, if I need to find a local business, I'll go to Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

I'm definitely not alone. Just look at the carnage in the yellow pages business.

If you're a business owner, it's become necessary to get on board local online marketing. Not only will you find good customers, but you'll be able to measure results (how many clicks you are getting), target segments (you can focus on various demographics), and help build your brand.

Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) advertising success on the web has slowed down in the last few months, proving that the all-powerful Google is not immune to the slowdown in advertising hitting all mediums during the recession. Add mobile advertising from Google to that list as well.

Although Google partner T-Mobile USA has sold more than one million Google Android-powered smartphones so far, that doesn't year compare to smartphone sales made by Research in Motion Ltd.'s (NASDAQ: RIMM) and Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL). Yet, those two platforms don't inherently have advertising embedded into them. Yet.

With most public companies sitting a lot closer to 52-week lows than 52-week highs, sending out flashy, full-color annual reports full of smiling executives and low-level employees, talking about "shared values" and "corporate culture" just doesn't seem quite right.

The USA Today reports that at many companies, "the traditional printed annual report to shareholders is slimming down if not disappearing completely." Corporate executives seem to be recognizing the irony in mailing out glossy magazine magazine-style documents to tell shareholders about their cost-cutting efforts. Instead, they're incorporating the annual report into the cost-cutting regimen and in some cases, taking it online entirely.

One of the auto industry's main arguments against settling things in bankruptcy court has been the notion that consumers wouldn't buy cars from a bankrupt company.

Now that Chrysler is in bankruptcy, it will have to find a way to convince car buyers that it's still alive -- and it could serve as an important test case for the efficacy of restructuring car companies in bankruptcy. If Chrysler succeeds, President Obama may opt to have General Motors (NYSE: GM) follow.

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that "Chrysler LLC is preparing to launch a marketing campaign to reassure customers and potential buyers that the auto maker is still alive and expects to bounce back from its bankruptcy filing."