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Brick-and-mortar retailers have become the first U.S. business group to be disappointed by Republicans since their midterm election gains, as party leaders indicated that a bill to end tax-free internet shopping was doomed. Retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy have long railed against a perceived loophole that they say gives e-commerce rivals an unfair advantage by enabling many online shoppers to avoid sales tax. But on Monday, a spokesman for John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, said a bill to tax online shopping wouldn't move forward in the final weeks of the current Congress.

Wal-Mart is making Black Friday a weeklong event, shifting away from the chaotic one-day sales that once epitomized the day after Thanksgiving. The "New Black Friday" will include five days of sales on Walmart.com and in stores, starting at 12:01 a.m. online on Thanksgiving and running through Cyber Monday, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company said in a statement today. "Black Friday has become Black Friday week," Duncan Mac Naughton, Wal-Mart's chief merchandising officer, told reporters yesterday. "Our customers want to shop when they want to shop so we're trying to expand the times and product availability with them."

For months, contract negotiations between a powerful union and multinational shipping lines progressed amicably in public, even though roughly 20,000 West Coast dockworkers labored without a contract. Now the public harmony has been shattered, raising fears that a strike or lockout could close ports up and down the coast and cause economic pain. The Pacific Maritime Assn., which represents employers operating port terminals and shipping lines, has accused the International Longshore and Warehouse Union of deliberately slowing operations at four major West Coast ports, including Los Angeles and Long Beach — the nation's busiest complex.

Alibaba's sales for Singles Day, China's equivalent of Cyber Monday, passed the $9 billion mark late Tuesday, topping last year's record of around $5.9 billion. The total, measured as gross merchandise volume, was announced via Alibaba's Alizila.com Twitter account, using the hashtag #1111sale. It said that 42.6 percent of sales were generated via mobile. Singles Day — so named because the date Nov. 11 has four singles (11/11) — was started as an inside joke between university students, but has morphed into China's equivalent of Cyber Monday.

Thirteen years after the first one opened, the Apple Store has entered an awkward adolescence. While Apple's storefronts remain the envy of the retail world, sales have flattened as the stores undergo a global growth spurt. Using one key measure in the retail industry, the stores generated $4,589 in sales per square foot in fiscal year 2014 — still better than any other brand, but down 23 percent from the $5,971 per square foot logged in 2012, according to research firm Customer Growth Partners.

This summer, Lucky, the 14-year-old "magazine about shopping," made a surprising announcement: it was merging with e-commerce company BeachMint and spinning off from Condé Nast as an independent company. In addition to the existing print magazine, the new Lucky Group will include a website with a heavy e-commerce focus, set to launch early next year. The Lucky Group's president, former L'Oréal marketing executive Gillian Gorman Round, sat down with Adweek to talk about the marriage of magazines and online shopping, what she likes in an ad and Lucky's new direction. 

Sears Holdings investors are too giddy about the money-losing retailer's slow-motion breakup. Shares of Edward S. Lampert's struggling store chain jumped 35 percent by early Friday afternoon on the news that it may create a real estate investment trust for many of its stores and lease them back. The move would raise significant cash, but shareholders, Mr. Lampert included, would finance the deal. And the prospects for the rump retailer remain pretty dim. The hedge fund billionaire's REIT proposal is the latest twist in what's starting to look like a gradual divvying up of the company's most attractive assets.

Three months into his tenure as CEO for wellness and supplement retailer GNC, Mike Archbold could hardly sound more optimistic about the company and the business. "There are so many great things about this brand," said Mr. Archbold, 54, citing GNC's position as market leader and its strong cash flow, as well as customers whom he declared "the most loyal in the industry." Yet, when Mr. Archbold's appointment was announced in early August, the company's recent history prompted one website to blare: "Michael Archbold takes the hot seat." 

Super-charged by increased mobile outreach, intensified consumer planning, and raised numbers of retailer mobile apps, traditional retailers will be going to work earlier, and working harder to engage consumers this season if they want their share of a projected individual $855.00 holiday spend, about 4 percent higher than last year. Sixteen-thousand consumers from the nine U.S. Census regions identified these real facts-of-retail-life in Brand Keys’ 20th annual national holiday shopping survey. And many consumers missed Black Friday. That's because it started last Saturday. Surprised? Well, it shouldn't have been a total surprise.

After a marketing campaign erupted into a social media firestorm last week, Victoria's Secret has changed the slogan that many found offensive. The company caused controversy when it used the words "The Perfect 'Body'" in an ad for its Body by Victoria lingerie. The photo that accompanied the slogan featured 10 models, several with visible ribs. The ad launched a Change.org petition and sparked social media outrage. While the same photo is still in use, now the words scrolled across read "A Body for Every Body."