Wal-Mart

Ever wonder how Wal-Mart gets the price of toilet paper so low? In part, it could be because the workers who distribute products are paid below minimum wage, according to the allegations of a new lawsuit. 

Target, Wal-Mart and a slew of other retailers have reportedly joined the emerging battle over turning smartphones into virtual wallets. The two giant discount retailers along with about two dozen unnamed retailers are teaming up to develop a mobile-payments system in an effort to capture at least a piece of a market expected to surpass $600 billion by 2016.

In their ongoing tug-of-war for consumers' grocery carts, Wal-Mart has again beaten Target on prices, according to the latest analysis from Kantar Retail. It won by the widest margin in seven iterations of the survey.

After receiving such great feedback on our inaugural list last year, we here at Retail Online Integration decided to make this an annual feature to highlight the leading female executives in cross-channel retail. The women on this year’s list, as were those on last year’s, are the best and brightest in the cross-channel retail industry.…

Wal-Mart, Office Depot and Macy’s were the only three retailers listed among the National Association for Female Executives’ (NAFE) list of the Top 50 Companies for Executive Women. According to NAFE, women represent 53 percent of the employees at these companies, on average. Women make up 23 percent of the board of directors at the NAFE Top 50 vs. 16 percent of the boards of companies in the Fortune 500. In addition, women comprise 22 percent of the executive level at companies in the NAFE Top 50 vs. 14 percent across Fortune 500 companies.

Price transparency has been — and continues to be — a disrupting influence in retail. It grants smartphone-wielding and web-based consumers the ability to instantaneously discover the best price available for almost any product at any time. Comparison shopping apps and websites conjure up for consumers the lowest cost available across traditional brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce sites within seconds.

On Nov. 9, 2011, a group of 10 senators from both sides of the aisle introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act, S.1832. On Oct. 13, 2011, a similar bipartisan bill was introduced in the House of Representatives called the Marketplace Equity Act.

Wal-Mart certainly has taken a step back from its heritage with the revelation that it's removing greeters from the graveyard shifts at its U.S. supercenters, in the first reversal of a 30-year-old tradition that helped define what the folksy chain was all about in its early years.

Wal-Mart has reorganized reporting relationships, putting its U.S. marketing team under the leadership of the chief merchandising officer. Marketing currently operates as a separate group and the move, said Wal-Mart, is designed to improve shopper communication.

Best Buy is hoping to do in the electronics market what other retailers and manufacturers have done in the appliances market — promote energy efficiency. In fact, Best Buy believes this will give it competitive edge against the likes of Wal-Mart and Amazon.