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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."

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. 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are quickly approaching and more than ever this holiday season, retailers need to cater to shoppers wherever they are as they research and purchase products. A recent survey of 3,000 global, multigenerational consumers found that 90 percent expect their customer experience to be consistent this holiday season regardless of how they shop — online or in-store. While this is no small feat, if retail brands keep the following priorities top of mind, they'll be ready to meet customer demands this Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

The younger generation appears to be more brick-and-mortar than anyone expected. They may live and breathe online, but come the holidays, they're going to the mall, says the 2014 Holiday Shopping Behavior Survey from Simon, a global retail real estate firm. Eighty-nine percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 33 who plan to buy one or more gifts said that they intended to shop at the mall this holiday season. 

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The number of computers in North America infected by the Backoff malware, which is blamed for a string of payment card breaches, has risen sharply, according to research from network security company Damballa. The company detected a 57 percent increase between August and September in devices infected with Backoff, which scrapes a computer's RAM for leftover credit card data after a payment card has been swiped, said Brian Foster, Damballa's chief technology officer. Damballa based its finding on data it collects from its ISP and enterprise customers, who use its traffic analysis products to detect malicious activity.

Wal-Mart's more than 11,000 retail locations across 27 countries provides the company's U.S. division a testing lab stretching across five continents, according to Wal-Mart International CEO David Cheesewright. Joking to the crowd gathered during an Oct. 15 investor conference, Cheesewright noted that he was the third speaker of the day who has English as a foreign language. To that point, the world has become smaller and more connected via technology. Retail is at the center of that change. Changes seen in the global markets often make their way back to the Bentonville mothership, he said.

Imagine spilling coffee on your way to a holiday party and needing a new shirt right away. Macy's has a solution: A quick Google search on your smartphone will tell you if that red sweater is stocked at a Macy's nearby, in your size, and at what price. Beginning in November, shoppers can search for an item on their phone and see what's stocked at their nearest Macy's location. Alongside the images are product details like price, size and color, directions to the store, and a link to the item on the retailer's website. 

Wal-Mart has high hopes for the holidays, in part because lower gas prices and unemployment rates are putting more money in the hands of its shoppers this year, said U.S. Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Quinn in an interview after his appearance at the Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando last week. To keep up with the demand for thousands of pieces of content, largely video, the retailer has established a single "holiday hub" for producing all of its holiday work, led by Senior Vice President, Creative, Andy Murray, Quinn said.

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