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New York – While attitudes haven't changed overwhelmingly since December 2013, some shifts in plans for the next six months may indicate that Americans are questioning their financial prospects during the next few months, according to a new Harris Poll. The survey of 2,234 U.S. adults shows that Americans are more likely than in December to say that they plan on decreasing their spending on eating out at restaurants (59%, up four points) within the next six months.

Arysta LifeScience president and CEO Wayne Hewett will stand for election to The Home Depot’s board of directors when current director Bonnie Hill steps down.

New York -- U.S. convenience outlets reached record in-store sales in 2013, with sales climbing 2.4% to $204 billion. Combined with gasoline sales of $491.5 billion, overall convenience store sales were $695.5 billion, according to figures released by the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS). Convenience stores account for 34.3% of all retail outlets in the United States, according to Nielsen, which is significantly higher than the U.S. total of other retail channels including drugstores.

Labeed Diab has been named SVP and president of health and wellness at Walmart, filling a position previously held by Dr. John Agwunobi who left the company.

When brand marketers and agency executives gathered in Chicago recently for the annual Shopper Marketing Summit there was plenty of talk about mobile, social and digital, but there was one thing no one talked about.

Mobile is the hottest thing going right now so hardly surprising there was plenty of discussion about myriad ways apps can be used to engage, influence and activate shoppers on the path to purchase. Mobile continues to transform the path to purchase, overlooked in discussions of the shoppers’ evolving journey was the role of packaging.

Shelton, Conn. – Nxt-ID Inc. intends to launch a smart wallet called Wocket. A biometrically secure smart wallet with a smart card that is immediately zeroized after each transaction, Wocket is designed to be useless to a thief.

Los Angeles – An electronic musician reportedly planted 5,000 copies of his own CD inside fake copies of the Justin Bieber “Believe” CD in retailers including Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart on April 1. According to the Associated Press, the musician, Paz Dylan, said he saw the stunt as more of a performance art piece than an April Fools’ Day prank.

Cincinnati – The Kroger Co. is collaborating with EInfochips and Wincor-Nixdorf to introduce a new enterprise IT architecture called Retail Site Intelligence (RSI). This store uses ZigBee wireless mesh networks to integrate long battery life sensors, handheld devices, point-of-sale devices and video management software into a next-generation platform for retail applications such as loss prevention, store automation and analytics.