News

BOSTON — A study conducted by Brodeur Partners has unveiled the most relevant retailers in the United States.

Is Walmart’s private brand White Cloud toilet tissue too good? That’s the question the company has to be asking itself about the product’s specifications after seeing recent test results from Consumer Reports.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — Staples has nominated Dr. Drew Faust, president of Harvard University, to its board of directors. The election of directors will take place at the company’s annual meeting, scheduled for June 4.

Walmart is the nation’s largest food retailer, and 140 million people shop its stores each week, yet somehow the company ranked second to last on a ranking of the best and worst supermarkets in America.

MINNEAPOLIS — Target has committed $15,000 in cash and gift cards to assist the Texas communities impacted by recent tornados. Cash donations will be distributed to The Salvation Army and the American Red Cross. In addition, Target has donated gift cards to other local nonprofit organizations for essentials such as water and food.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Sam's Club is offering free screenings for brain health at all of its stores that operate pharmacies this month, the retailer said Friday.

The company, which has performed more than 1 million health and wellness screenings at it stores since 2011, said it would offer the screenings on April 14 for members and the public, including a memory test and educational materials on Alzheimer's and dementia provided by the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, as well as body mass index, blood pressure and glucose tests.

In the 1950s, when science fiction writers dreamed about the coming age of computers, they assumed that like everything else in their experience, computers would get ever larger as they got more powerful. Some predicted computers would be as big as small towns, maintained by thousands of workers.

Obviously, extrapolating from what you know isn’t always the best way to predict the future. It fails to account for the unexpected invention or idea that turns everything on its head.

Redwood Shores, Calif. -- Oracle announced that it has taken another step toward helping companies handle peak online volumes of traffic and transactions with the news that its ATG Web Commerce platform has improved performance by 300% on Oracle Exalogic and the Oracle Exadata database machine when compared with systems similar in size and configuration.

The performance gains were achieved during multiple benchmarking tests.

Armonk, N.Y. -- An IBM analytics-based forecast released Thursday expects that sales of home furnishings in the United States will shoot higher in the second quarter, with in-store sales increasing nearly 8% to $23.2 billion and online sales increasing 28.4%.

Combined in-store and online sales of home furnishings are expected to grow 16.6% in the second quarter.

Dublin, Calif. -- Epicor Software Corp. said Thursday it has acquired Internet AutoParts, a provider of business-to-business e-commerce solutions for automotive replacement parts distributors, jobbers and vehicle repair businesses.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.