Dick Boer, the chief executive officer of Ahold, which has 3,000 stores, mostly supermarkets, across Europe and the United States, says the internet has vastly changed retail and the grocery business.

Just as China leads the world in economic growth, consumer optimism in China is stronger than in the rest of the world.

Commerce platform provider hybris is partnering with LivePerson Inc. to offer a service that will enable electronic-commerce sites to offer a live chat feature to their customers.

Rising and increasingly volatile costs dominate retailers' top challenges sourcing private label goods, while changes in consumer behavior fueled by mobility and online shopping are driving the strategic importance of private label sourcing, according to Deloitte's study entitled Private Label Sourcing: Strategies to Differentiate and Defend.

After some 19 years of struggling with e-commerce, Walmart is once again learning that managing a merged channel retail strategy is almost never going to beat a well-run pure play e-tailer like Amazon when it comes to online sales.