By Amy Antenora

The Week in Review offers a snapshot of the most highly read stories of the week as seen on aftermarketNews. To access the complete stories, simply click on the highlighted links. If you missed reading one of our daily news emails, just click on the link that says "News Archives" at the bottom of the page to begin catching up on the latest industry news.

Leading off our most-viewed articles this week is our recent Executive Interview with Rusty Bishop, CEO of Federated Auto Parts. In the exclusive interview, Bishop shares his thoughts on such issues as consolidation, branding and sourcing product from overseas. When asked about the heated subject of brands, Bishop said, “We believe that brands are still important to professional technicians as vehicle systems have become more complex. Brands provide great overall value and strong brands enjoy increased confidence in product quality.”

AMN readers were also interested this week in the latest round of VP appointments at Advance Auto Parts. Carl Hauch will join the company as senior vice president, operations – west. Hauch will be responsible for providing strategic direction and leadership to his area, which covers more than 800 stores. He will report to Ken Wirth, senior vice president, customer experience officer. Advance also announced the appointments of Dave Hamilton as vice president, operations support and Dan Peterson as vice president, sales development. Hamilton and Peterson will both report to Mike Marolt, senior vice president, customer operations excellence officer.

This week, we repeated our publication of “A Call to Action to Determine the Root Cause of Returns.” The piece, authored by Tom Easton and Chuck Udell of Essential Action Design Group, is intended as a call to action for the industry to fund the effort to determine the Root Cause for returns. If you missed it, here’s your chance to give it a read. When you’re done, we encourage you to get involved and we invite you to send us your feedback. Click here to email me your comments.

Returns is just one of many issues that the aftermarket struggles with today. Unemployment is another. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) the unemployment rate is the highest it has been since October 2004. In this week’s edition of Herman Trend Alert, strategic business futurists Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia take a look at the real story behind these numbers.

While the aftermarket industry looks at strategies for reducing returns and other issues impacting the bottom line, fuel costs along with how and whether to pass them long have become hotly debated in recent weeks. In his most recent Publisher’s Perspective column, Jon Owens talks about the dialogue that has been sparked following his suggestion that all parts stores and two-step WD’s begin to implement delivery service charges to their delivery customers in light of today’s unprecedented gas prices.

To view all of the news from the past week, simply click here to view our News Archives.