Wal-Mart
October 9, 2017 at 11:32 am
In its ongoing effort to compete with Amazon.com, Wal-Mart announced a new way of handling in-store returns of online purchases that it claims could shrink the processing time to 35 seconds. Starting next month, Mobile Express Returns will enable consumers to begin a return process on Wal-Mart’s app before bringing the item in question to any…
October 3, 2017 at 11:31 am
Wal-Mart has acquired the same-day delivery service Parcel, as it continues to focus on getting orders to customers’ front doors more quickly. Brooklyn-based Parcel offers evening deliveries and can handle perishable and frozen foods. According to Wal-Mart, Parcel has partnerships with several meal-kit and grocery companies. This is the latest move in Wal-Mart's battle with Amazon.com over delivery. Last…
October 3, 2017 at 10:59 am
After chatting with and listening to retail executives at last week's Shop.org conference in Los Angeles, I left the event with the following three themes: 1. Amazon.com is a Behemoth, But We Have Brands and Communities The overriding sense I got listening to retailers at Shop.org is that while they understand that trying to compete…
August 22, 2017 at 11:52 am
Last week during an earnings call, Wal-Mart’s executive team shared that the Bonobos and ModCloth brands will soon be sold on Jet.com but not inside brick-and-mortar Wal-Mart stores. “The Jet customer demographic — millennial, urban, higher income — aligns well with the demographics of ModCloth and Bonobos,” said Wal-Mart’s spokesman Randy Hargrove in an interview with Business…
August 21, 2017 at 1:11 pm
Wal-Mart has opened a new front in its battle with Amazon.com. The world’s largest retailer has applied for a U.S. patent for a floating warehouse that could make deliveries via drones, which would bring products from the aircraft down to customers’ homes. The blimp-style machine would fly at heights between 500 feet and 1,000 feet (as much…
July 28, 2017 at 9:28 am
Top Republicans driving the GOP tax reform effort have given up on border adjustment. The border adjustment proposal was a key revenue-raising plank of the plan House Republicans unveiled last year. It would have taxed imported products but let exports go untaxed. Retailers that get many of their products from overseas raised concerns about the proposal, saying…
June 26, 2017 at 9:49 am
In episode 98 of Total Retail Talks, Laura Phillips, senior vice president of sustainability, Wal-Mart, discusses the big-box retail chain's new supplier sustainability platform, Project Gigaton. Phillips addresses why sustainability is a critical component of Wal-Mart's corporate values, the business benefits the company has realized from its many sustainability initiatives, and offers advice for other…
June 6, 2017 at 9:38 am
President Trump's proposed budget is expected to slash $193 billion from the federal government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, from 2018 to 2028. SNAP currently has an annual cost of around $70 billion. Should Trump's plan be approved by Congress, millions of Americans may be forced to bear the brunt of the drastic changes, with the…
June 6, 2017 at 9:11 am
Amazon.com is dropping its membership price for low-income shoppers, going after a stronghold on this demographic held by Wal-Mart. The online retailer giant said Tuesday that it will offer a nearly 20 percent segment of the U.S. population — people who obtain government assistance with cards typically used for food stamps — a $5.99 monthly Prime membership, less than the…
May 26, 2017 at 9:40 am
On Tuesday, Brian Cornell, CEO of Target, testified against what has been dubbed the border adjustment tax (BAT) to the House tax-writing committee, as many large retailers are leery of a tax on the thousands of products they import from foreign markets. The proposed 20 percent tax on imported goods has been touted as a…
