Mass Merchant

Was he or wasn’t he? Unfortunately for Walmart, a legitimate question about whether comedian Tracy Morgan and his entourage were wearing seatbelts the night their limousine was rear-ended by a Walmart truck has made a bad situation worse for the retailer.

Bentonville, Ark. – Walmart  is testing a concept where shoppers order their groceries online, schedule a pick-up time, and then pick up their order at the Walmart Pick-up Grocery depot in as little as two hours without having to leave their car, according to local CBS affiliate KFSM-TV 5News. Shoppers also can schedule a pick-up three weeks in advance. The pilot Pick-Up Grocery location is in the chain’s hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas.
 

Hibbett Sports has promoted Jared Briskin to SVP and chief merchant. Briskin replaces Rebecca Jones, who left the company this week.

London – Amazon.com ranks first in end-to end customer experience across key digital channels including websites, mobile sites and apps. According to the latest EChannel Retail Benchmark report from EDigitalResearch, Amazon tops the benchmark study due to their core multichannel functionality, especially across the search and purchase sections of the customer journey.

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is reportedly claiming that comedian Tracy Morgan was not wearing a seat belt when a truck driven by one of its drivers struck a vehicle Morgan was traveling in on the New Jersey Turnpike on June 7, critically injuring Morgan and killing one of his fellow passengers. According to Bloomberg, Wal-Mart said Morgan is partially or fully to blame for his injuries in a filing in federal court in Trenton, New Jersey.

New York -- It’s official: California Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed legislation for the nation's first statewide ban on single-use plastic bags at supermarkets, drug stores and select other retail outlets.

"This bill is a step in the right direction — it reduces the torrent of plastic polluting our beaches, parks and even the vast ocean itself," Brown said in a signing statement. "We're the first to ban these bags, and we won't be the last."

Chicago -- While retailers have collected years of customer data, only 9% are leveraging the information in a structured, usable way, according to HRC Advisory, a leading strategic retail advisory firm and unit of Hilco Global. The finding is part of HRC’s latest retail industry study, which found that outdated organizational structures and processes, non-integrated IT platforms and a lack of a clear roadmap are major barriers preventing customer data in enabling a retailer’s omnichannel efforts.

By Matthew K. Harding, president, Levine Management

Moving into the final months of 2014, the outlook for retail in the Northeast remains quite positive. We are seeing demand from national, local and franchise companies across a broad range of categories.