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Wal-Mart's battle to breach big cities is actually beginning to bear fruit. The behemoth's years-long attempt to open stores in Chicago is finally progressing. Wal-Mart is moving ahead with plans to open dozens of new locations within the city limits. If the "Chicago Community Investment Partnership" is successful, it could open the door for stores in difficult-to-enter urban markets elsewhere.

Wal-Mart has been trying to open discount stores in Chicago for years, but has met with stiff opposition from unions, politicians and some residents. One store did open on the city's West side in 2006, but plans for additional locations have been blocked by the City Council as members stump for votes from their own wards at the expense of those where Wal-Mart would seem most welcome, such as areas where some of the poorest Chicago residents live that offer few or no retail properties.

Wal-Mart could bring much-needed jobs and services to these communities. There are no small retailers to put out of business and vast wastelands of empty space that could be added to the city's tax rolls. But that won't happen until Wal-Mart makes concessions -- and, with the latest plan, it appears as if the retail behemoth is closer to making them.

It's an ambitious plan. The "Chicago Community Investment Partnership" aims to open several dozen stores in the city over the next five years. The company offers up five ways in which the plan will benefit Chicago:

After testing sales of Amazon's Kindle e-reader in 100 Florida Target stores earlier this year, Target began selling them on June 6 in all of its 1,740 stores throughout the U.S. And now, in yet another bold move, they've cut the price on the device by $60.

Target has been selling Kindles for the same price as Amazon does online, $259, and will no doubt drop its price to $189, too.

The surprisingly strong sales of Apple's newest glittery toy, the iPad, as well as price reductions on the Kindle's strongest apples-to-apples competitor, Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader, has put pressure on Amazon to expand marketing beyond its own web site and match its main competitor's pre.

According to the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column, (subscription required), Pier 1 Imports has canceled its annual clearance sale due to lack of stock in inventory. The limited supply caused the home furnishing chain to mark all items at full retail price, a move that will likely come as a shock and a disappointment to the loyal customers who flock to the store annually for the sale.

Pier 1 says it expects store traffic to fall but is confident it will retain healthy margins.

Best Buy is reverting to an old favorite to try and grow sales after a pretty weak earnings report -- appeal to women shoppers.

Forgive me if I seem cynical, but we've heard this before. More than once.

The moment that Steve Jobs stood up on stage to present the iPhone 4, Apple lovers went wild. The new features and sleek design prompted an overwhelming surge of pre-orders -- which not surprisingly led to an operations gridlock at Apple and its exclusive phone carrier AT&T.

The iPhone 4 is already sold out and some customers are even experiencing difficulties with their previous orders before the sell out announcement. The Twitter community grew increasingly active as Apple customers voiced their outrage about getting a failed response to their iPhone 4 requests, many complaining bitterly about how they had ordered early precisely to avoid this sort of thing.

Apple is apologizing all over the place, as our sister site Engadget reports. But that's cold comfort for customers jonesing for their latest iPhone fix. No word yet on when there will be inventory.

Customers can still get their hands on the old 3GS iPhone for $99, but it's no longer cool enough to be a contender for die-hard iPhone fans. Looks like customers will just have to be patient a bit longer. Wonder if there's an app for that...?

Retailers lost a whopping $33.5 billion to fraud last year, but that's still the lowest level in 19 years, a new industry report says.

Retail "shrinkage" -- the combined result of people stealing from stores, employee theft, administrative errors and vendor fraud -- decreased to 1.44% of overall sales, compared to 1.51% in 2008, according to the National Retail Federation. That amounts to losses of $91.8 million per day or $3.8 million per hour in 2009.

Kids don't usually have a lot of money to spend on gifts, but they can still pick out something to give Dad that shows him they think he's a great guy. 99-cent Only Stores are advertising the usual socks and ties, along with Fruit of the Loom tee shirts and Jordache men's cologne for a buck each. Indeed, your dad may appreciate any combination of these, but if you want to do something a little different, consider these five gift suggestions that keep costs down to $7 or less.

Car Crazy -- 99-cent Only Stores has car wash, leather and vinyl cleaner, wet wipes and air freshener for under a buck each. Pack these in a bucket or handled caddy along with a microfiber towel and a wash mitt or large sponge to make a great gift for the dad who likes nothing better than to baby his car.

We all have a lot of kitchen gadgets that we've spent good money on but never seem to use, like a Crock Pot that's seen the light of day maybe six times over the past 10 years, and a wok that we might have used once or twice.

And it's not just kitchen gadgets that sit around collecting dust. How many toys have your kids clamored for, gotten for their birthday or Christmas, then immediately relegated to a dark corner of their closet? Or what about that leather jacket you just had to have, only to realize your wool coat kept you a heck of a lot warmer?

The average American consumer makes about two trips a week to the supermarket. Apparently, all of this time spent wandering grocery store aisles has made shoppers certain of what they like -- and don't like -- when it comes to where they fill their carts.

For the fourth time, we asked our readers to tell us which grocery stores they love and which they hate. In this latest edition, we found it was a toss-up on stores like Aldi, Food Lion and Kroger. Depending on location, it seems these three retailers had just as many fans as detractors.

And while none of the stores on our list received a unanimous thumbs-up or thumbs-down, our picks for the Best & Worst Grocery Stores 2010 were the ones that had the strongest leanings one way or the other.

Keep reading to see the top and bottom five, as well as actual quotes from readers.

It's been vilified as a bad employer, but Wal-Mart's annual shareholder meeting is less about financial results and more about feting its employees. The world's largest retailer hosts a party in its home state of Arkansas that might surprise a few critics.



Held at the Bud Walton Arena at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, the company plays host to roughly 16,000 attendees including associates, retirees, shareholders, executives, analysts and the media. This year Jamie Foxx served at the master of ceremonies and musical guests included Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Josh Groban, Enrique Iglesias and American Idol winner Lee DeWyze. Executives extolled the wonders of Wal-Mart's international reach while associates from China, Japan and Mexico (among others) cheered them on.

Sears has chosen to innovate and offer a new experience for their customers: The company plans to host a marketplace on its website which will allow other merchants to leverage the Sears name to sell their products. The new marketplace increases the variety of products by nearly 12 million, which will help bargain hunters compare and select from a wide variety of items.

Sears Holdings is already the parent company of many brands, including Kmart, Land's End, Craftsman, and more. To help shoppers navigate, Sears says it will introduce a personal shopping experience which will connect customers with a sales agent to locate desired products, which will be ready for pickup at a Sears store -- all within 5 minutes, or the customer receives a $5 gift card. Customers will be able to reach an agent by phone, email, or live chat on Sears.com.

Personal (an in-person) shopping agents do well at stores like Nordstrom that cater to the enhancing the customer's experience. Personal shopping agents, however, could bottleneck the online shopping experience at Sears.

What do you think?

Reports that Men's Wearhouse was opening a Women's Wearhouse weren't on the button after all. In fact, Men's Wearhouse CEO George Zimmer said in the Wall Street Journal they were downright "inaccurate." "We are not opening up a chain of women's wear stores," he said. In correcting an original story by the New York Post and chased by the Journal citing anonymous insiders, the company declared Wednesday night it had already moved too swiftly in expanding female apparel at its bargain branch of K&G stores, saying sales fell below expectations.

Men's Wearhouse executives didn't skirt the issue in a conference call to investors, sounding "downbeat" in their forecast for a stronger female presence in the chain, according to the Journal.

Men's Wearhouse, the business clothier known for its commercials in which Zimmer declares, "You're going to like the way you look," recently launched commercials departing from their traditional spiel to attract an untapped base of potential customers, an executive said to stakeholders.

But it appears the chain will not be tailoring a new confederation of stores to women anytime soon. As Zimmer often concludes in his ads, "I guarantee it."

Bing Cashback, Microsoft's popular rewards program that paid shoppers to start their shopping with a Bing.com search, is being discontinued. Shoppers will still be able to take advantage of Bing Cashback savings between 2% to 30% until 9 a.m. PST on July 30, at which time the program will be closed for good.

If you still have rewards in Bing Cashback, or pending, don't worry, you'll still get your cashback. When announcing the closing of Bing Cashback, Microsoft stated that it will allow users to claim their cashback rewards and view Bing Cashback purchase history until July 30, 2011 and will continue to provide customer support for the year. This is especially important since Bing Cashback rewards can take up to 60 days to be available for redemption.

Diesel mechanic Ron Kuzma of Glen Carbon, Ill., had a positive experience buying a tractor through eBay so he saw no reason for concern when purchasing another piece of equipment from the site. He ended up losing nearly $10,000 in what turned about to be a scam.

Bill Smith, an investigator with the St. Louis Better Business Bureau looked into Kuzma's case. Kuzma first began questioning the transaction when the photo of the item directed him to a separate website. This site asked him to communicate with the seller directly by e-mail and to avoid eBay's "ask seller a question" feature, Smith told Consumer Ally.

Wal-Mart's annual shareholder meeting was a subdued event compared to past years, thanks to some pretty dismal sales at U.S. stores in the last two quarters and management's lack of a real plan to turn those trends around. Sure there were a lot of upbeat and flashy moments at the meeting in Fayetteville, Ark., where approximately 16,000 attendees gathered to celebrate the company, if not its financial performance.



The festivities kicked off before dawn at the Bud Walton Arena at the University of Arkansas where thousands of Wal-Mart associates who had traveled to the company's home state filled seats to the rafters. This is a tradition for Wal-Mart, and roughly half of its U.S. stores sends representatives to cheer the company on. Large contingents of employees from China, Japan and Mexico were among the international attendees. Board members, retirees, media and financial analysts filled the main floor of the arena, but shareholders and hard facts were in shorter supply.

How much is the shareholder meeting orchestrated? So much and for so long now, that they've nearly lost all pretense of this being a meeting about financial performance and goals. Executives, their families, Wal-Mart corporate employees and more than a few members of the financial press left the arena seating area and were gabbing loudly in the VIP rooms. What drove them back to their seats? Not one of the many shareholder propositions being read (and ignored), but the appearance on stage of American Idol winner Lee DeWyze.