Dollar Tree says FTC wants 340 stores sold ahead of Family Dollar deal at Reuters. Read more   Rite-Aid Q4 Comp +4.5% (Front-End +2.0%) Read the release   Is Wal-Mart asking suppliers to fund Savings Catcher? by Kim Souza at The City Wire. "Wal-Mart spokeswoman Molly Blakeman said she was not unable to substantiate claims about supplier support of the Savings Catcher program prior to publishing this report." Read more   Jeff Bezos' rocket company to begin suborbital test flights this year by Irene Klotz at Reuters. "The so-called New Shepard spaceship is designed to fly three people and/or [...]

  Wal-Mart to pay referral eVouchers for its grocery pickup test by Kim Souza at The City Wire. "The world’s large retailer is now offering users up to $100 in referral e-Vouchers for sharing their referral across their social media feeds on Facebook and Twitter...The retailer states on its website that the eVoucher payments are limited to $10 per qualified referral on a minimum $50 order. Other limits include no more than 10 qualified referral payments per calendar year or 100 per lifetime." Read more   Bloomberg: The Cheap Toys You Buy Your Kid Are Rarely Inspected by Renee Dudley. [...]

  Wal-Mart exec: Credit card upgrade a ‘joke’ by Jose Pagliery at WTTV 4 via CNN Money. "The fact that we didn’t go to PIN is such a joke,” (Mike) Cook told CNNMoney....“Signature is worthless as a form of authentication,” Cook said during a presentation at the conference. “If you look at the Target and Home Depot breaches … not a single PIN debit card needed to be reissued in those breaches. The card number was worthless to the individual thief and fraudsters, because they didn’t know the PIN.” Read more   Amazon Woos EBay’s Once-Loyal Merchants With Faster Sales [...]

  Big Brands' Dash for Amazon Cash Is No Joke by Jack Neff at Ad Age. "Prime members' conversion rates -- or the percent of visitors to the site who end up buying -- is just over 60%, Mr. Caine said. "When you look at those same people, they're converting at a rate of only 6% when they visit Walmart.com." Read more   Dick's CEO addresses golf commitment in letter to customers: "We remain 100% committed to the golf business going forward" Read the full message   Rite Aid March Comp Sales +4.3% (Front-End Comp +2.5%) Read the release   [...]

  Wegmans top supermarket in Consumer Reports survey (Costco #6, BJ's #42, Target #45, Sam's #47) by Emily Babay at Philly.com. "The results, which appear in the May issue of the magazine, are based on nearly 63,000 responses that reflect about 111,200 shopping trips readers took between March 2013 and July 2014." Read more   Greg Foran updates progress in Walmart U.S by Kim Souza at The City Wire. "Foran said there are some bright spots in the retailer’s fleet of some 4,500 stores, calling out four stores in Boise, Idaho, as models for others to follow. He told analysts [...]

  Wal-Mart Ratchets Up Pressure on Suppliers to Cut Prices by Paul Ziobro & Serena Ng at WSJ. "The retailing behemoth says it has been telling suppliers to forgo investments in joint marketing with the retailer and plow the savings into lower prices instead...“They kept pushing, ‘We’re going back to basics, it’s all about low pricing,’ ” said one supplier who attended the meeting." Read more (Subscription)   Amazon's Dash Button, for quick reordering, is not an April Fools' joke by Lauren Raab at LA Times. "The user sets up the device to correspond to a certain product (say, a [...]