Walmart

Worthington, Ohio — Target, Kohl’s, Costco, Macy’s and Old Navy, with an honorable mention to J.C. Penney, are the holiday 2013 retail winners, according to business intelligence provider Prosper Insights & Analytics.  The firm on Tuesday released its  Holiday 2013 Retail Winners & Losers list at the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer and Retail Conference.

Walmart will kick off a pre-Black Friday savings event in stores and online at 8 a.m. Friday, Nov. 22. The big box retailer is lowering prices on toys and electronics to match select Black Friday offers from Target, Toys “R” Us and Best Buy one week early.

Bentonville, Ark. -- The National Labor Relations Board has reportedly determined that Wal-Mart acted illegally when it disciplined and fired employees who had been involved in strikes and other labor protest activities. According to the New York Times, the board investigated actions taken last year against about 100 Wal-Mart employees in stores across 12 states including California, Colorado, Texas and Massachusetts.

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart Stores has reportedly tested more than 200 factories with which it does business in Bangladesh and found safety issues at 32 of them. According to Reuters, Wal-Mart sent out an email saying that 30 of those 32 factories have corrected the issues since their discovery.

Red hot Pinterest is offering new functunality to third parties that will allow them to curate content and drive traffic to their sites, and major retailers such as Walmart, Target and Zappos are all over it.

Sam’s Club was Walmart’s best performing division during the third quarter and holiday plans outlined by president and CEO Rosalind Brewer suggest that could be the case in the fourth quarter as well.

Same store sales at Sam’s increased 1.1% and total sales increased 2.1% to $12.4 billion a while with traffic was up among both business and individual members. Operating profit increased 9.2% to $474 million.

Bentonville, Ark. -- Walmart and the Walmart Foundation are committing $1 million to the Red Cross and Save the Children for emergency relief efforts in response to needs created by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. The donation includes funds given by the Walmart Foundation and Walmart's international operations.

Walmart opened 32 of its small format Neighborhood Market stores during the third quarter and is on track to end the year with nearly 400 units enroute to bigger things in 2014.

Walmart’s small format stores generated third quarter same store sales of approximately 3.4%, according to the company, which rivals best-in-class supermarket competitors, namely Kroger.