“Wal-Mart’s Prices Beat Dollar General in Most Categories” by James Callan at Bloomberg Businessweek.  “Wal-Mart prices were below Dollar General’s 100 percent of the time in household goods and more than 85 percent of the time in grocery, auto supplies, pharmacy and health and beauty aids, according to a study conducted by Bloomberg Industries during the past 22 months…Dollar stores “have a competitive advantage to Wal-Mart in that their locations are in residential areas,” said Poonam Goyal, a Bloomberg Industries senior analyst based in Skillman, New Jersey. “However, as Wal-Mart ramps up its neighbor market stores, that advantage will no longer hold.”  Read more:  https://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-05-01/wal-mart-s-prices-beat-dollar-general-in-most-categories-1

 

“How not to go viral: The Home Depot’s off-brand Grumpy Cat” by Alex Dalenberg at Upstart Business Journal.  “But maybe Richard is in a bad mood because he just doesn’t seem to be catching on. Richard’s Twitter feed — which began in November — still only has about 700 followers. In contrast with Grumpy Cat has more than 82,000.”  Read more:  https://upstart.bizjournals.com/companies/media/2013/05/01/the-home-depot-tries-to-cash-in-on-cats.html

 

“Wal-Mart Is Getting Really Serious About Tracking Customers” by Ashley Lutz at Business Insider.  “We’re building a global technology platform whose goals are as simple, frankly, as they are audacious,” Neil Ashe, CEO of e-commerce, told Women’s Wear Daily. “We want to know what every product in the world is. We want to know who every person in the world is. And we want to have the ability to connect them together in a transaction.”  Read more:   https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-is-tracking-customers-2013-5#ixzz2SCD2fCF2

 

“Here’s How Sears Can Catch Up with Pace of Change” by John Kotter at Forbes.  “Today, the threat of the pace of change is just part of the problem. Even if you’re able to gather speed and agility to tackle this one threat, there will be others. This is where it becomes essential for organizations to build a “change engine” within their organizations. One that can recognize a threat on the horizon, and accelerate to position the organization to meet the challenge.”  Read more:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkotter/2013/05/02/heres-how-sears-can-catch-up-with-pace-of-change/

 

“Wal-Mart’s John Aden talks leadership, relationships” by Kim Souza at The City Wire.  ““Wal-Mart is at its best when it’s collaborating with suppliers,” Aden said.  He recalled three years ago when Wal-Mart decided to bring back hunting, fishing, sporting goods and expanded hardlines inventory…I decided to introduce the ‘Bring it meetings.’ I told some 1,000 or so hardline suppliers that I was clearing my calendar for the next six weeks and got a few category leaders to do the same. We committed to meeting with suppliers who wanted to bring us big ideas,” Aden said.  Over six weeks, 3.5 days a week and 10.5 hours a day, Aden said they met with 146 suppliers.  “It was amazing, we got new ideas, new products, new brands. Our goal was to get two years of sales growth in one and we surpassed that.”  Read more:  https://www.thecitywire.com/node/27648#.UYMeCrWG3X4

 

“Harris Teeter mum on possible acquisition as sales, profits rise” by Ely Portillo at Charlotte Observer.  “The company said its sales rose 4.3 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago, to $1.17 billion. Profits were up more than 8 percent, to $32.9 million. Harris Teeter said it has been focused on managing labor costs to keep expenses down.  Harris Teeter didn’t disclose any new information about the possibility of selling the company. In February, Harris Teeter said that it had hired J.P. Morgan to help it explore its options after two private equity firms expressed interest in buying the upscale grocer.”   Read more: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/05/02/4018020/harris-teeter-mum-on-possible.html#storylink=cpy

 

“Rite-Aid Same Store Sales Down 4% in April”   “Same store sales for the eight-week period ended April 27, 2013 decreased 3.0 percent over the prior-year period. Front-end same store sales increased 0.1 percent while pharmacy same store sales decreased 4.4 percent. Prescription count at comparable stores increased 0.1 percent over the prior-year period.”  Read more:  https://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsLang=en&newsId=20130502005790&div=-1245645151

 

“Canadian Tire Announces State-of-the-Art Digital Content Warehouse and ‘App Factory'”  “Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited today announced that it is executing the next phase of its innovation strategy and will be opening the ‘Canadian Tire Cloud Computing Centre’ in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the fall of 2013. One of the most advanced centres of its kind in North America, the 28,000 square foot site will house a digital content warehouse, application lab, testing lab and high performance data centre. It will serve as the core digital hub for the Canadian Tire Family of Companies.”  Read more:  https://media.prnewswire.com/en/jsp/latest.jsp?resourceid=6777714&access=EH

 

“Two-Thirds of United Kingdom Smartphone Panelists Used Their Mobile Devices for On-the-Go Commerce in March”  “eBay is the leading mobile commerce app in the United Kingdom smartphone panel, used by 44 percent of panelists in March. The eBay app users spent nearly two and half hours with the app in an average of more than 50 sessions in the month.”  Read more:  https://media.prnewswire.com/en/jsp/latest.jsp?resourceid=6772017&access=EH

 

“Wal-Mart ups ante on e-commerce” at MSN Money.  “Wal-Mart has forecast $9 billion in global e-commerce sales for its current 2014 fiscal year. (Previously, the company didn’t break out online sales.) The company’s overall revenue for its fiscal 2013 year, which ended in January was just under $470 billion.”  Read more:  https://money.msn.com/technology-investment/post.aspx?post=db433d61-0349-4d5b-a6e0-a7c48b1e3546

 

Thanks for reading…have a great weekend.

 

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