Walmart Guilty Of Gender Bias? Woman Takes On Retail Giant And Wins $31M by Cristina Silva at International Business Times. "Before her firing, McPadden said she revealed that customers at a Walmart store in Seabrook, New Hampshire, where she worked were getting prescriptions filled improperly because of inadequate staff training. She said a male co-worker who also lost his pharmacy key was not fired." Read more   Amazon: Q4 Sales Up 22% Read the release - Street not impressed - shares fall big Read more via CNBC   ...Amazon adds another 8,400 employees, tops 230,000 worldwide by Todd Bishop at GeekWire [...]

  Bezos set to expand empire to take on Spotify: sources by Claire Atkinson at NY Post. "The e-commerce giant has held meetings in the past few weeks to discuss licensing tunes for a full-blown subscription music service that would ape streaming music market leaders Spotify and Apple Music, several sources confirmed." Read more   MEIJER SCOUTS TWIN CITIES FOR MORE STORES - Meijer has looked at properties in at least four Twin Cities suburbs, according to Business Journal sources who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect business relationships. The sources said Meijer has looked at sites in Brooklyn Park, [...]

  A night in Chicago with Walgreens CEO Stefano Pessina by Shia Kapos at Chicago Crain's. "His private plane uses Chicago Executive Airport north of O'Hare, which is a short drive to Walgreens' headquarters in Deerfield. Good thing. He says when he's in town, he spends most of his time in the office. He puts his head down at night at a hotel in Wheeling. And he only visits Chicago now and again for dinner. “I don't like to be in traffic,” Pessina acknowledged." Read more   Walmart Launches OneOps, An Open-Source Cloud And Application Lifecycle Management Platform by Frederic Lardinois at [...]

  Nearly half of U.S. households have a Prime membership by Elizabeth Weise at USA Today. "Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated that there were 54 million Prime members in the United States at the end of 2015. That’s 21% of the U.S. adult population of 246 million." Read more   ...BUT GROWTH SLOWS - Is Amazon Prime nearing its peak? by Greg Bensinger at MarketWatch. "...the rate of growth in signups slowed to 35% from 54% in 2014, according to CIRP’s estimates." Read more   Fortune: The Billionaire Behind Walgreens' Quest for Global Dominance by Jennifer Reingold & Marty Jones. "One bottle of [...]

  Sears Canada races to close more stores amid cost-cutting efforts by Marina Strauss at Globe & Mail. "The struggling Sears has instructed real estate firm CBRE to look for alternative uses for Sears’s weakest stores, such as its clearance outlets, Brandon Stranzl, executive chairman of Sears Canada, said in an interview this week...He said “everything and anything” is on the table..." Read more   As REI thrives, does it have members or merely shoppers? by Angel Gonzalez at Seattle Times. "Now, as members number in the millions, “It’s more about getting the discount than a relationship to the co-op. [...]

  THE TALE OF TARGET CANADA - The Last Days of Target by Joe Castaldo at Canadian Business. "(Tony Fisher), 38 years old at the time, was regarded as a wunderkind who had quickly risen through the ranks at Target’s American command post in Minneapolis, from a lowly business analyst to leader of a team of 400 people across multiple divisions. Launching the Target brand in a new country was his biggest task to date. The news he received from his group that February afternoon should have been worrying, but if he was unnerved, Fisher didn’t let on..." Read more   [...]

  Target to Add 1,000 IT Jobs by Jackie Crosby at Star Tribune. "It’s not just about Mom anymore,” Cornell said Wednesday, as he laid out a vision for the retailer’s future in a speech to about 300 business leaders in downtown Minneapolis...Evoking the still-strong popularity of Bruce Springsteen, who is 66, Cornell said the Boss understood that “to make great music, he had to evolve with the times.” Read more   Amazon’s Clothing Selection Is Now Bigger Than 250 Walmart Supercenters Combined by Jason Del Rey at Recode. "The number of items listed on Amazon in apparel and accessories [...]

  Home Depot Replaces Leader Of US Stores by Paul Ziobro at Dow Jones Business News. "Home Depot Inc. is replacing the head of its U.S. stores, Marc Powers, with another company veteran, becoming the latest major retailer to change the leader of its store operations." Read more   ...Ann-Marie Campbell, one of Mr. Power’s deputies, will take over his position. Mr. Powers, 54, will leave the company effective Feb. 1 via Wall Street Journal (subscription)   ...2015 Interview: Campbell learned much of what she knows about business from her grandmother in Jamaica, who didn’t finish high school but turned [...]