Wal-Mart

The secret of the e-commerce titans isn't just their size — although that helps — but their excellent service. One key element of that service is personalization. Now any business can know as much or more about a given user than all the information that Amazon and Google have been collecting on us for years. How? Through Facebook Connect.

While you're likely in the middle of the busy holiday season right now, 2013 is just around the corner. As you begin to look forward to the new year, here's a list of predictions I've put together for what cross-channel retailers can expect come 2013:

Wal-Mart, like many other retailers, will be opening its doors extra early this Thanksgiving in the hopes of cashing in on deal-hungry shoppers. The retailer announced last week that rather than waiting until Friday, a day when retailers traditionally offer massive markdowns, Wal-Mart stores will open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Some of their employees, however, are less than keen to head to work on the federal holiday.

Black Friday, traditionally one of the busiest shopping days of the year, is nearing. Big-box stores are going to have to deal with “showrooming” — i.e., when in-store shoppers use their smartphones to identify cheaper deals online and then make their purchases elsewhere. What can retailers do to offset the effect of showrooming during Black Friday?"

So far Hurricane Sandy has unfortunately proved itself worthy of many of the "worst" descriptors it was assigned prior to its arrival along the East Coast of the United States. Certainly the 48 people who lost their lives, 8 million people who lost power, and the hundreds of thousands of homeowners who lost pieces of their homes and their peace of mind represent the worst of the worse possible outcomes created by Hurricane Sandy. But just behind that, the negative impact that Hurricane Sandy will have on U.S. business overall, the retail industry in particular, is staggering. 

Wal-Mart plans to double its multicultural ad spending as part of a sweeping initiative to move the company from a silo-like approach to making sure everyone takes responsibility for multicultural marketing. "One hundred percent of the growth [in sales] is going to come from multicultural customers," Tony Rogers, Wal-Mart's senior vice president of brand marketing and advertising, told the audience at the ANA's Multicultural Marketing and Diversity conference on Tuesday in Miami.

For retailers that sell home repair items and emergency supplies, a storm like Hurricane Sandy represents a logistical puzzle and a big sales opportunity. Few retailers have in place plans as firm as these retailers do for when a storm hits. Like its competitors - Wal-Mart and Lowe's - Home Depot's corporate eye was squarely on Hurricane Sandy a week ago, when the company's supply-chain managers and merchants began preparing for the advancing storm by moving high-demand goods

Back in May, Target announced that it would no longer be selling the Amazon Kindle. Earlier this month, Wal-Mart followed suit. While neither big-box retailer explained exactly why they've declared war on Amazon.com's tablet, the motive is clear. Every time Target or Wal-Mart sells a Kindle, they put their brick-and-mortar stores in jeopardy by providing Amazon even greater reach in its digital retail power grab. Viewed in this context, the tandem moves are direct, sharp-shooter responses aimed directly across the bow of a major competitor.

Welcome to this week's "Pin of the Week." This week's featured pin is an infographic titled "The Social Retail Competition" from Unmetric, a social media analytics provider. The infographic is based on a study by Unmetric that focuses on how retailers are battling it out in the social media space.

As you read this, you're likely in the middle of or wrapping up your busy back-to-school season, so your thoughts may not be on the upcoming holidays. But if last year is any indication, you should probably start thinking about it. Holiday 2012 figures to be another blockbuster shopping season for cross-channel retailers.