Wal-Mart

In 1949 the average grocery store stocked 3,700 products. Today, the average supermarket has 45,000 products, while stores like Wal-Mart stock 100,000 products. When it comes to options, consumers have every size, shape, color and price for every product imaginable. On top of that, you can go online to find millions more. Combine this new shopping environment, dubbed “consumer hyperchoice,” with busier schedules and the demise of the educated sales force and it makes for a stressful purchasing process for consumers.

Wal-Mart has agreed to pay $2.1 million for not complying with a judgment against the chain for overcharging customers in California, the attorney general's office said. The 2008 judgment had directed the retailer to fix pricing errors discovered during a government investigation into its California stores.

Wal-Mart's customers were latecomers to online shopping. Now increasingly they're trolling for deals at Amazon, putting pressure on Wal- Mart to fix its lagging e-commerce operation. 

Angry Birds Space, Rovio's next big game in the phenomenal mobile game series, launches tomorrow with some major promotions from Wal-Mart.

During the 2011 holiday season, the top retail apps and websites combined — Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, Target and Wal-Mart — reached nearly 60 percent of smartphone owners, according to Nielsen. “The majority of smartphone owners used their devices for shopping this past holiday season,” said John Burbank, president of strategic initiatives at Nielsen. “Mobile shopping has reached scale and is only going to grow as smartphone penetration continues to rise.”

Wal-Mart's Greenwash, a new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, suggests "Wal-Mart's sustainability campaign has done more to improve the company's image than to help the environment."

Wal-Mart has purchased Newput Corporation's Social Calendar products, services, website and Facebook app. The app currently has a total of 15 million users with approximately 400,000 active users per month. Social Calendar allows users to get birthday, anniversary and holiday reminders by email and SMS, and to post personalized photo cards and other virtual greetings on friends' Facebook Walls on their birthdays. Users can also plan events among friends, get movie showtimes and integrate events into a public calendar. 

Wal-Mart is launching a new service that will allow consumers to digitize the movies they own on DVD or Blu-ray, enabling them to watch them on their smartphones, computers or other internet-connected devices. "Wal-Mart is helping America get access to their DVD library," said John Aden, executive vice president for general merchandising at Wal-Mart U.S. "Wal-Mart Entertainment’s new disc-to-digital service will allow our customers to reconnect with the movies they already own on a variety of new devices while preserving the investments they’ve made in disc purchases over the years."

Wal-Mart's heavily promoted sustainability initiatives have done more to improve the company's image than to help the environment, according to research by the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

A South African court today has largely dismissed an appeal from its government and unions to roll back approval for Wal-Mart's $2.4 billion acquisition of Massmart, ending months of uncertainty about the status of the deal.