Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart has sued the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission over the law prohibiting publicly traded companies from selling liquor in the state. The company, which includes Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores, is the biggest beer and wine retailer in Texas, and it wants to sell spirits, too. Texas law prohibits publicly traded companies from holding a package store permit. In the complaint filed in federal court in Austin last week, Wal-Mart said it's also challenging a loophole that "irrationally prohibits" retailers from holding more than five package store permits.

Staples announced Wednesday that it will acquire Office Depot for $6.3 billion, a move that merges the two largest chain stores selling office supplies. The deal comes as the retailers are seeing massive upheaval in their industry. Demand for paper-based office supplies is dwindling as more business functions move online, and a diverse array of competitors, including Amazon.com and Wal-Mart, are competing to sell these kinds of goods. Together, the brands would have about $39 billion in annual sales and about 4,000 stores. Staples CEO Ron Sargent said that a merger would help the brands compete more effectively.

Apple Pay doubters question whether anyone will swipe their iPhone at a store checkout counter. But as mobile shopping booms, Apple Pay is already showing huge returns for early adopters. It's a small sample size, with Apple Pay only out since late October, but so far iPhone owners with the service enabled are vastly more likely to make online purchases on their phones. Take sports and concert ticket search app SeatGeek, whose sleek new checkout screen boasts a conversion rate up to 30 percent. With Apple Pay, that follow-through rate shoots up to 80 percent.

Wal-Mart is launching a service allowing customers to pick up their tax refunds in cash at all stores nationwide. It's the discounter's latest move to offer more financial services, which is seen as a path to bringing more shoppers into its stores. The world's largest retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., says the process will take the same time as if customers were to file their returns electronically and then get direct deposit, which could take just a week, says Daniel Eckert, senior vice president of services for Wal-Mart's U.S. division.

As we enter a new year in a slow-growth economy, it's worth considering which retailers may excel in this competitive environment and those which may fall behind. With limited opportunities for growth, it takes something extra to stand apart from the pack. In a word, it takes disruption.

In an interview with Retail Online Integration yesterday at the National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York City, Charlie Larkin, senior director of the GameStop Technology Institute (GTI), discussed why the retailer believes technology and innovation are critical to its future, as well as some of the cool new things GameStop is doing to connect the digital and physical worlds in its stores.  

With the arrival of the holiday shopping season came a renewed wave of online fraud. The recent Wal-Mart episode revealed an interesting new twist in this game. The often-complex relationship between "traditional" brick-and-mortar retailers, "new" online e-commerce platforms, and the people that drive all of these — i.e., the consumer — took a whole new turn. 

Is Target headed towards the same fate as Sears? Analysis of the discount retailer's latest numbers suggest it's possible. According to a Seeking Alpha report, Target reported a small revenue decline on Oct. 31 of last year compared with the year prior; the firm declared $73.7 billion in TTM revenue, compared with $73.81 billion the same period in 2013. While the drop is far from catastrophic, the numbers show a more troubling picture when held up against Target's top rivals. Wal-Mart, Kroger and Costco all reported multibillion-dollar revenue increases in the same period.

Dynamic pricing is a topic that's been getting a lot of attention lately. It's come a long way since it publicly debuted in the airline industry in the 1980s. Now we're used to seeing it across many different industries. From Uber to Amazon.com, many businesses are putting their own spin on dynamic pricing. But what is it exactly? To put it simply, it's a flexible pricing strategy in which businesses alter their pricing based on a number of factors, both internal and external.

For top U.S. retailers, free delivery is now the norm. That is good news for shoppers, but not so much for investors. During the just-ended holiday season, outlets from Target to Wal-Mart to Amazon expanded their free-delivery options, adding more items eligible for free shipping. They also did away with minimum spending thresholds to qualify for the perk. Yet as