Santa hasn't even been tugged down Central Park West yet, and Wal-Mart (WMT) is already slashing its prices. The market among major retailers is intensifying, with many offering products as loss leaders in order to entice customers into the store (physical or otherwise) and boost their basket sizes. Along with Target (TGT) and Amazon (AMZN), Walmart is slashing DVD prices, the same tactic it's using with books.

Retailers are rushing to undercut each other this year, which is causing prices to spiral down quickly. When Walmart announced reduced prices on several titles to $10, Amazon followed at $9.99, with Walmart stepping back in at $9.98.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) has been the leader in DVD sales in the U.S. for years now. It's estimated that 40% of all U.S. DVD sales originate within the doors of the world's largest retailer. But, could those days be coming to an end?

With Blu-ray DVD players coming with built-in internet video streaming, cable and satellite having video-on-demand choices of all recent movies, and more people buying content from Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iTunes every day, what is the future of the physical DVD?

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) raised quite a lot of ire when it started promoting $4 pharmacy prescriptions back in 2006. Now that some of the competition has followed suit, Wal-Mart is making its prescription mail-delivery program front and center. Customers don't even have to set foot in a Wal-Mart to get their cheap prescription drugs.

After an apparent successful pilot program that began in Michigan this past May, Wal-Mart will be offering customers a 90-day supply of many common generic drug prescriptions for $10, following on the heels of a similar plan by national pharmacy chain CVS/Caremark Corp. (NYSE: CVS), which offers 400 generics for a $9.99 fee and a one-time $10 sign-up fee.

A report today in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reveals that Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) is set to launch two low-priced e-readers, which could prove to be stiff competition for the wildly popular Kindle devices sold by Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). Sony's latest entries in the e-reader market, known as the PRS-300 and PRS-600, will be priced at $199 and $299, respectively. By contrast, the cheapest Kindle will run you $299.

Sony's budget-friendlier devices are slated to hit store shelves later this month, with the Journal citing Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) and Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) as two retailers planning to offer the e-readers. Meanwhile, the low pricing isn't limited to the gadgets themselves; Sony will also drop the cost of best-selling titles from $11.99 to $9.99, matching the deal offered by Amazon.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) will soon be allowing customers of its UK-based Asda retail chain to tell it what to stock. Instead of the usual retail "you'll buy it since we ordered it" mentality, Asda will be e-mailing its customers with pictures and descriptions of items available to them from Far East suppliers for feedback. In a word, this is a paradigm shift for retailing.

The idea of real-time (or near-to-it, anyway) feedback from consumers on product trends and other valuable data is an excellent one. It saves frustration from the consumer end and it allows for huge gains in merchandising productivity, inventory turns, and efficiency from the retailer's end. I hope this is successful for Asda, and that Wal-Mart carries the concept into more of its holdings throughout the globe.

Retailing behemoth Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) won't be aggressively rolling in health clinics into its retail stores in 2009, as it has scaled back its plan to 31 locations with clinics from the original estimate of about 400 stores in 2009. Wal-Mart even had as many as 77 locations with in-store clinics in 2008, so it has drastically rolled back its plans here. What happened?

The recession happened, that's what. The gap from the original 77 clinics to the present 33 occurred when venture capital-funded clinics had their funds dry up amid the credit crunch of late 2008 and they haven't returned yet. Although Wal-Mart sees health clinics as a still-untapped opportunity in its stores, they won't be coming to every possible Wal-Mart location any time soon. Indeed, former CEO Lee Scott said that it would take five to seven years to get 2,000 clinics inside Wal-Mart locations. Wonder where that estimate is now?

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) seems keen on the green scene. No, that's not a limerick, but apparently a state of mind at the world's largest retailer. Not only does it control the temperatures of its stores from its Bentonville headquarters; it's becoming fanatic about eco-sustainability and green products. Now that its well into being able to procure and supply ecologically-sound products to its customers, it has a mandate to its Chinese suppliers.

Welcome to the 103rd installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) has nosed into the health care game before. Just a recently as a year ago, the world's largest retailer wanted to open in-store health clinics as a possible entry point to providing health care inside its retail locations.

The retailer now wants to see if it can become a low-cost provider of health care for small businesses and employers. That's very interesting -- the notion that employers could shop at Wal-Mart for employee health care like consumers do for laundry detergent. Of course, the prices Wal-Mart would offer would be the lowest possible.

Welcome to the 102nd installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) has had one big, black eye in recent time that it just can't get away from: its relationship with labor. Wal-Mart's fiercest critics have pointed out many examples of the low pay, pricey health insurance, and low-end working conditions.

Are Wal-Mart workers really in that big of a bind, or does the largest retailer in the world have pay and benefit parity with all its competitors? When you're the biggest, you have the target painted on your back -- and Wal-Mart has been there for some time. However, the company has just announced a rather large bonus plan for its employees with a sizable target indeed: $2 billion dollars.