Walmart

Walmart COO Gisel Ruiz and president of health and wellness John Agwunobi are listed as speakers at events taking place within the next 30 days in Northwest Arkansas.

Former Sam’s Club merchant Jason Reiser just got his second promotion in seven months at Family Dollar and now the newly anointed chief merchandising officer has to restore sales growth at the retailer’s 8,000 stores.

Former shopper marketing executive turned Walmart SVP of creative Andy Murray will share his views on the retail industry’s evolving omnichannel landscape during a keynote presentation at the annual Shopper Marketing Summit.
 

Groupon has named Tamer Tamar as SVP of international operations and Sri Subramaniam as VP of engineering for smart deals.

“We’re thrilled to have Tamer and Sri join Groupon and bring their incredible talent to our expanding bench of senior executives,” said CEO Eric Lefkofsky. “Tamer and Sri will accelerate Groupon’s plans to grow our international operations and deliver more and more relevant deals to our customers throughout the world.”

Japan’s biggest e-commerce player uses third-party marketplace model to expand

Most U.S. consumers, and many retailers for that matter, have probably never heard of Rakuten. But if Japan’s largest e-commerce marketplace has its way, that will soon change: The company has set its sights on becoming a household name in the United States. An even loftier goal: outpacing e-commerce giant Amazon.com.

While we wait for all of the official numbers to come in from the 2013 holiday shopping season — a topic I’ll address in a future column — I thought this might be a good time to expand on one of the points I made about retail downsizing in my 2014 forecast piece.

Vancouver, British Columbia -- Mobile shopping continues to grow at a rapid pace, with an increasing number of mobile shoppers embracing Internet retailer apps, social shopping apps, and brick-and-mortar retail apps to enhance their shopping experience. However, new research prepared by Yankee Group for mobile analytics firm Mobdia Technology shows usage of these apps varies widely depending on many factors, including the type and quality of the mobile app.

Retailers subject to increasing — and costly — environmental scrutiny

“I’m a retailer, not a hazardous waste producer.” If that’s what you think, you may be wrong.