News

Local leaders and community members joined Walmart, its 65 employees and hundreds of customers for the grand opening of the Walmart Neighborhood Market in downtown Los Angeles at 701 W. Cesar E. Chavez Ave. 

The store soft opened on Friday, Sept. 13 to give folks an opportunity to preview the store, and since then has served more than 10,000 customers.

QVC has promoted John Cowan to the position of SVP of information technology global services. Cowan, who will report to Linda Dillman, CIO, will be responsible for driving key global IT initiatives and providing leadership for QVC's European IT organization.

Newell Rubbermaid has appointed Nate Young to the newly created position of VP of global innovation, where he will be responsible for energizing the company's innovation funnel.

By Jeff Wakefield, Verifone

Mobility. It is such a broad concept, meaning different things to merchants and consumers. Mobile acceptance, mobile payments, mobile POS, mobile shopping – each plays a distinct part in the overall mobile experience and each has different risks and rewards.

Within this larger mobile arena, the security of the mobile payment device offers the greatest risk for both merchants and consumers alike.

Meijer announced the introduction of the mPerks Baby Rewards program, offering rewards on baby merchandise purchases, allowing customers to personalize rewards and earn $10 off their shopping purchases for every $100 they spend on items like diapers, baby wipes, training pants and toddler food. 

The retailer's expansion of the program comes soon after the number of prescribers passed 1.7 million; enrolled customers saved $25 million so far this year, with as many as 45,000 customers signing up for the program each week.

Deerfield Park, Ill. – Walgreens has entered into a multi-year agreement to provide Inovalon's data-driven encounter support platform, Electronic Patient Assessment Solution Suite (ePASS) within healthcare clinics at select Walgreens to support improvements in managed care quality and performance.

The ePASS platform allows identification and resolution of gaps in quality, care, assessment, documentation, and risk score accuracy, as well as analytical capabilities. It will be rolled out at 400 stores nationwide.

Rite Aid reached a milestone in its store conversions and saw growth in the latest expansion to its loyalty program as it posted its fourth-consecutive profitable quarter.

During the second quarter of fiscal year 2014, the number of stores in the chain that have been converted to the Wellness and Genuine Well-Being formats surpassed the 1,000 mark, with the total number of stores converted totaling 1,019 — including 114 under the newer Genuine Well-Being format — and expected to reach 1,200 by the end of the year. 

Warrendale, Pa. -- Rue21 stockholders have approved the previously announced merger agreement under which funds advised by Apax Partners will acquire the shares of Rue21 for $42 per share in cash. Approximately 99.7% of the shares voted at today’s special stockholder meeting voted in favor of the agreement.