General
The former Tom & Co top executive will take over leadership of Japanese retail company Seiyu as of March 15th. Seiyu is a subsidiary of retail giant Walmart.
» Read more
Walmart is moving onto the Japanese e-commerce market: the American retail giant is joining forces with Rakuten to sell its products on the latter's Rakuten Ichiba market place.
Food
Walmart is adding augmented reality to its iPhone app in a tool that helps customers to compare products.
Walmart wants to know what makes your heart beat faster. Literally: the American supermarket giant has requested a patent for shopping carts that register everything from customers' heartbeats to their conversations.
Food retailers are looking to make the food chain more transparent and more efficient using blockchain technology. In Belgium, Carrefour is about to introduce a QR code to pork and poultry this year that shows the product's entire life span.
American retail giant Walmart sells most of its under-performing Brazilian branch to an investment group. The sale fits into a strategy to focus on growing markets.
American shoppers will soon be offered a ride to Walmart... in a self-driving car. Google's sister company Waymo is rolling out a pilot in which around 400 regular customers will be taken to the hypermarket with an unmanned shuttle car.
Two major American companies join forces to try to beat the omnipresent threat of Amazon: Walmart (Amazon's biggest competitor in retail) and Microsoft (Amazon's main rival in cloud services) have signed a strategic partnership for the next five years.
Despite Amazon’s attractive offer, Indian online retailer Flipkart has chosen for Walmart and (remarkably), Google owner Alphabet as the new owners of 75 % of Flipkart’s shares. The deal is said to be worth 15 billion dollar.
Electronics
The battle for dominance on the Indian e-commerce market seems to be stepping up a notch: Amazon may be looking to buy a majority stake in Flipkart, trying to better Walmart which already started negociations with the Indian online retailer.
American retail chain Walmart is expanding in China with a smaller version of its well-known hypermarket. The high-tech supermarket explicitly targets the growing population of online shoppers in China by offering payments through mobile application WeChat.
Walmart has filed a patent to get drones to fly in stores. The American retail giant wants drones to help customers in its stores: shoppers can ask them for directions or to get something checked in the shelves.
American department store chain Walmart and Indian e-commerce party Flipkart’s negotiations may comprise more than only online retail. Chances are that it will introduce a physical chain.
E-commerce is still underrepresented in food sales, but Amazon’s American and European 2017 growth was impressive. Are we close to a tipping point?
The future of food retail is to be found in China. Following Alibaba, major competitor JD.com has also opened its technologically advanced supermarket: 7Fresh uses eCommerce technology and aims to open 1,000 stores.
American Walmart is legally Wal-Mart Stores, but its popular name has long since been Walmart. However, the company will now alter that: in this eCommerce era, it aims to be more than merely a store chain.
