business

Best Buy Co. Inc. is making a renewed effort to draw women into its stores -- and its boardroom.

With women making up about 45 percent of the $200 billion consumer electronics market in the United States, the Richfield-based retailer wants a bigger slice of that pie (though it declined to say how big of a share it currently has).

Among its workforce, about 29 percent of all U.S. employees are women, and 31 percent hold executive titles.

To boost those stats, the company said this week it is putting more muscle behind its Women's Leadership Forum (WOLF), naming Liz Haesler and Mary Stoddart to lead the next stage of the program.

Haesler, a 20-year retail veteran, is vice president of Home Life and Trend, and brought Liz Claiborne products and other designers to Best Buy. Stoddart has worked at Best Buy for 14 years and is vice president and territory general manager.

"We're not known for being a destination for women," company spokeswoman Kelly Groehler said. "We need to change that. And if we're going to grow market share, we need to make sure that Best Buy is a great place for women to work."

Minneapolis ad agency Campbell Mithun won a "Silver Pencil" at the One Show, a national competition honoring work in print, radio, television, interactive and new media.

Campbell Mithun's award was in the category of public service for a viral and guerrilla marketing effort leading up to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last August. Its spot was a tongue-in-cheek look at how Minnesotans could make Republican visitors feel welcome in a state known more for its Democratic traditions.

The winning spot was called "Park" and showed two men and two women doing some same-sex necking on adjacent park benches who quickly change partners just before two suit-and-tie-wearing, convention-delegate types walk by. "What nice kids," says one.

Bored consumers need only think about the variety in their life when they get tired of eating the same sausage pizza every Friday night. That's the conclusion of a marketing study on "satiation" co-authored by Joseph Redden from the marketing institute at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.

If consumers think of the other pizzas they have eaten, or computer games they have played, then they will be less bored with the repetition from that sausage pizza or computer solitaire.

Satiation is friction, says the report, which will appear in the Journal of Consumer Research.

"It prevents people from enjoying favorite activities and it prevents retailers from gaining repeat business," Redden and his co-authors concluded.

Phillip Minerich, vice president of research and development at Hormel Foods Corp., received a Food Safety Leadership award last week from NSF International, a food safety group.

Minerich was given a lifetime achievement award for his 32-year tenure at the Austin, Minn.-based company and for his contributions to health and food regulators in the detection of contamination.

JACKIE CROSBY, DAVID PHELPS