Walmart

Executives from retail and restaurant chains grabbed some of the top spots in an annual ranking of the nation’s top CEOs.

Rite Aid chairman and CEO John Standley was rated the number one executive on ExecRank’s 2015 Top Mid Cap CEOs list. Taking the number two spot: Sally J. Smith, CEO and president of Buffalo Wild Wings. Gary Friedman, chairman and CEO of Restoration Hardware Holdings, took the third spot.

Walmart and the Walmart Foundation is out with its annual Giving Report which puts a monetary value on all the ways the retailer and its charitable arm sought to make a difference during the 2015 fiscal year.

From a big picture standpoint, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation donated more than $1.4 billion in cash and in kind donations, primarily food, and Walmart’s 2.2 million employees also contributed more than 1.5 million hours of their time outside of work to volunteer causes.

As Walmart prepares to launch its Walmart Pay mobile pay solution, the discounter should study Starbucks’ success in the mobile payments area, according to a report by TheStreet.

Starbucks rolled out its mobile wallet in 2011, and mobile payment now accounts for 21% of all transactions in U.S. company-owned stores. If Walmart wants to get even close to those numbers, it will have to follow Starbucks’ lead and make sure that its mobile payment solution provides a real value to consumers.

Walmart has recalled marketing executive Tony Rogers from his post in China to lead the retailer’s domestic marketing efforts.

Retailers need to improve several aspects of their omnichannel customer engagement strategies if they want to truly satisfy customers.

Home Depot, Amazon.com and Safeway are tops when it comes to offering the best mobile commerce experience according to a new study that benchmarks 20 top U.S. retailers against one another.

New technologies, new products, new consumer preferences — change always threatens to disrupt the status quo, and the retail landscape is no different. The trick is to determine which trends are passing fads and which have real staying power.

To help, we asked six experts from the Daymon Worldwide family of companies (Interactions is a subsidiary of Daymon Worldwide) to share their predictions for trends that will have the biggest impact on the U.S. retail environment in 2016.

Improved Transparency and Distribution

Former Target Chief Marketing Officer Michael Francis will reportedly serve as a marketing consultant at Walmart when the retailer’s current CMO steps down.