"Consumers open to putting mortgages from Wal-Mart on their shopping list" by Rick  Rouan at Columbus Business First via Reuters.  "Charlotte, N.C.-based Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group’s study of 618 U.S. consumers says that alternative financial services providers are threatening banks’ dominance in the lending market. The survey found that one in three consumers would get a mortgage from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and about half would be willing to finance their home purchase through eBay Inc.’s online payment subsidiary PayPal Inc."  https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2012/12/03/consumers-open-to-putting-mortgages.html   "Staples Announces In-Store 3-D Printing Service" by Mike Senese at Wired.  "A new service called “Staples [...]

    "Retail Frenzy: Prices on the Web Change Hourly" by Stephanie Clifford in The New York Times.  "Ms. Schulz said sophisticated retailers set algorithms to change prices in response to competitors. “Retailers pipe a bunch of information in electronically, like internal information — cost, availability of inventory, sales goals,” along with competitors’ prices, she said.  The software also lets retailers establish rules on the pricing of certain products: always price Furbys 5 percent below Kmart, for example, or make sure some goods are priced at an average of Amazon’s and Walmart’s prices. Generally, pricing managers also manually adjust prices." [...]