Walmart

Channeling his inner Sam Walton this week, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon rattled the company with the unexpected appointment of a relatively unknown newcomer to replace Bill Simon as CEO of its largest and most profitable division.

By Sandy Skrovan, U.S. research director at Planet Retail

The economic trend for some time now has been a slow and meandering recovery. Despite improving consumer confidence numbers, a surprising first quarter GDP decline of 2.9% speaks to that uncertainty. Retail analysts and observers have a tendency to blame the weather whenever we have a bad economic quarter or when retail sales are unexpectedly sluggish, but I tend to be a little dubious of those explanations. Last winter was definitely rough enough to impact spending, but I don’t think it’s enough to explain the continued issues into the spring.

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has reportedly invested $103 million in its Indian operations with the goals of expanding its wholesale store count and increasing its online presence there. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart intends to increase wholesale store base in India from the current 20 to 70 in the next five years.

Imagine a lifelong Procter & Gamble employee suddenly named CEO of Walmart and that is essentially what happened at leading global retail Tesco where the company has named long time Unilever executive Dave Lewis as its next CEO.

Many teachers spend some of their own money on back-to-school supplies and to capitalize on the trend Walmart has introduced a 10% rebate program.

Kmart has been offering Shop Your Way members check-cashing services since September last year, but this week the retailer is making the service available for $1 or less, rather than $3. For the lowered price, members will be able to cash payroll and government checks up to $2,000 and personal checks up to $500.

Mountain View, Calif. – Customer experience testing provider UserTesting is launching its free service Peek out of beta. Peek allows anyone to receive free five-minute videos of real people using their website, mobile site, or mobile app.

In roughly four months in beta, Peek achieved 40,000-plus user tests delivered, almost two years’ worth of videos watched, 202,000-plus video views, and more than 8,000 social postings and shares. Retailers including Staples and Wal-Mart have used Peek.