Walmart

Halifax — Walmart Canada on Friday opened its first supercenter in Atlantic Canada, in the Halifax Shopping Centre Annex in Halifax.

The store is one of 37 supercenter projects planned for the company's current fiscal year, which ends January 31, 2014. The projects, which were announced earlier this year, include building new stores and expanding, remodelling or relocating existing stores and represent an investment of more than $450 million in the Canadian economy.

ATLANTA — PepsiCo and Feed the Children have teamed up with Compassion Atlanta and Walmart to distribute two tractor trailers full of food and essentials to 800 Atlanta-area children and families in need.  

No one would dispute that Lakeland, Fla.-based supermarket is a wonderful operator, but a piece in the August 12 issue of Forbes takes things a little too far and characterizes the regional operator of 1,073 stores as, “the Wal-Mart Slayer.”
 

Whatever a cloud-based Web site acceleration company is, Walmart acquired one this week called Torbit.

The retailer’s Silicon Valley innovation engine known as @Walmart Labs described Torbit as “a front-end optimization innovator that has been focused on making the web a faster and better place.”

Torbit is known for developing measurement, analytics and performance improvement tools to help companies identify and enhance their overall site performance.

Walmart knows it isn’t going to win any supermarket industry prizes for store experience, not when operators such as Whole Foods and Publix are involved, but not leading the pack on price is a different matter.

Last week it was veteran retail analyst Walter Loeb bemoaning what he viewed as Walmart’s deteriorating store standards. This week Ad Age took aim at the company’s brand image.
 
In a piece by Simon Dumenco, he recounts how early shopping experiences at Walmart stores were an eagerly anticipated experienced. However, like Loeb Dumenco took a shot at the store experience and then when a step further.

By Jake Weatherly, [email protected]

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. — Kmart is offering members of its Shop Your Way loyalty program a new payment option called Pay in Store. The program launches nationally this month and allows online shoppers to reserve an item for 48 hours.