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Just downstairs from a real estate agency in Campbell, California, a team from eBay is experimenting on a very different type of dressing room for their partner, the tech-forward fashion brand Rebecca Minkoff. These dressing rooms feature Kinect sensors that record customers’ motions, adjustable lighting, touchscreens, and a sophisticated tracking system which identifies the customer and remembers what they bring into the dressing room and don't purchase. The goal? A dressing room which sends emails to customers afterwards, offering them the clothing that they didn't purchase in a size or color the store doesn't have.

Black Friday is exactly two weeks away and the holiday season is just around the corner, which is causing the competition between retailers to intensify. Now Wal-Mart executives are telling managers at its stores across the U.S. to price match Amazon.com and other online retailers. Greg Foran, president and CEO of Wal-Mart U.S., said that the price-matching plan simply formalized what many of the stores were already doing. "About half of the stores were doing it anyway," said Foran during an earnings call. The policy is known internally as "Online Price Match," which is part of the "Ad Match" program.

Target has acquired a Pittsburgh-based company that says its software platform brings "an Amazon-like shopping experience" to in-store customers. Powered Analytics Co-Founder Collin Otis and a spokesman for Minneapolis-based Target confirmed the deal Wednesday. Terms weren't disclosed. Otis says the firm, founded in 2012, will remain headquartered in Pittsburgh. Powered Analytics’ Fabric product uses mobile technology, location data and machine learning to connect a retailer's app to the in-store shopping experience.

When a consumer watchdog organization alerted eBay that it had found hundreds of counterfeit items on the site, eBay blocked the whistleblower's accounts and removed its comments warning people about fake products. It did this instead of removing the fake products and blocking the sellers of them. The company, The Counterfeit Report, had just completed a nine-month investigation into counterfeit products being sold on eBay, publisher Craig Crosby, told Business Insider. It had discovered 250 of them, verifying that each one was a fake with the manufacturer.

Shoppers beware: The massive discounts and promotions after Thanksgiving and Christmas may soon be history, according to a new retail report. EDITD, a retail analytics provider, says that the upsurge in discounts that follow national holidays is waning, both in the U.S. and the U.K. "It's interesting to note that 'January sales' appear to be a thing of the past," said EDITD in a report that was circulated on Wednesday and led by CEO Geoff Watts.

Old Navy becomes the latest brand to find itself embroiled in a plus-size controversy. It's under fire for charging women more for plus-size jeans, sizes 16 to 30. Men, meanwhile, pay one price for a pair of denim no matter the size. A Change.org petition — which has already gathered over 25,000 supporters — notes the price disparity can be up to $15 for women. For years, plus-size women have paid higher prices because manufacturers claim more fabric leads to higher production costs. But the petition argues this doesn't hold true if manufacturers and retailers are discriminating between genders.

Abercrombie & Fitch, after making numerous management changes to appease angry shareholders this year, is still facing heat for CEO Mike Jeffries’ spending and his partner's excessive involvement in the business. The company is aiming to settle a lawsuit brought by a Florida pension plan at the end of August, which documents a host of bad behavior by Jeffries, his partner Matthew Smith, and Abercrombie's board. The shareholders, furious over the more than $140 million Jeffries has made since 2008 despite Abercrombie's lackluster performance, were able to obtain hundreds of internal corporate documents for review as part of the lawsuit. 

Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company known as much for its creative approach to environmental responsibility as for its clothing, announced yesterday at Fast Company's Innovation Uncensored conference that it's made an investment in Yerdle, an app that lets people give away items and get redeemable credits in exchange, through the company's $20 Million & Change internal venture fund. In 2013, Patagonia leveraged its financial success to start the fund, which invests in socially and environmentally responsible startups in the clothing, food, water, energy and waste industries. 

Dillard's has stopped selling a controversial holiday sign that appeared in the girls section of one of its stores in Florida. The sign read: "Dear Santa, This year please give me a big fat bank account and a slim body. Please don't mix those two up like you did last year. Thanks." The sign was supposed to be part of the home merchandise area with other "whimsical" signs, said Dillard's Spokeswoman Julie Johnson Bull. "We immediately removed it from the little girls display," she said, adding that the sign would no longer be sold in any of the chain's stores.

American Apparel, a beleaguered retailer still wincing from a boardroom struggle over the summer, said sales fell 5 percent in the third quarter and losses grew - dragged down in no small part by its own investigation of the behavior of Dov Charney, who was fired as chief executive in June. The company, which has been without a permanent chief executive ever since, reported a net loss of $19.2 million, or 11 cents a share, most of which was nonrecurring costs