From "Everyday low prices" to "Anytime, anywhere."

That appears to be what's in store for the evolution of Walmart's brand-defining slogan. Soon, the latter motto will be the marketing tagline for Walmart.com, unit President Joel Anderson told Bloomberg. And so maybe, given the rising importance of e-commerce to the giant of bricks and mortar, it could stand for the whole brand someday.

The mega-retailer is plumb in the middle of a huge transition in e-tailing, just as it has spent the last few years tacking back and forth between its traditional everyday-low-prices positioning and the attraction of providing less clutter and more "sophistication" for upscale consumers. In the case of Walmart.com, the spur — of course — is Amazon.com.Continue reading...

Walmart has just released Shopycat, a standalone Facebook app to make shopping, holiday and everyday, smarter and stress-free (hopefully). Shopycat mines social data to recommend items from Walmart.com, Walmart stores and other partner sites including RedEnvelope, Barnes & Noble, NBC Universal and ThinkGeek.

“We’ve been working on how to add a social layer on top of e-commerce. One of the key areas where we thought we could make a difference is in gift-giving … we thought if we could take a person’s interests and ‘likes,’ that are expressed on Facebook, and tie those with a vast product catalog, then we could make gift-giving much more enjoyable,” commented Anand Rajaraman, head of WalmartLabs, to Venture Beat.

Shopycat currently passes users to other websites for purchase, but by this time next year, shopping will be done directly on Facebook, as Ravi Raj, VP of product for WalmartLabs told VB.Continue reading...