Remember the movie "Mall Rats"? Then you're old enough to recall when the shopping mall was the place to go, to shop, to see movies, to wander aimlessly with your friends. The recession is changing that, as it has changed so much else. Among those retailers cited as departing one sad-sack mall in Charlotte, N.C., according to the Wall Street Journal article, is Dillard's.

Can Forbes magazine decide whether Little Rock is "dangerous" or "livable"? Or are the two terms not mutally exclusive?

Who knows? But we want to try lend some context to Little Rock being named this week to Forbes' Most Dangerous Cities List.

You might recall that Little Rock also ranked No. 15 on that same magazine's recent list of America's Most Livable Cities.

The Most Livable Cities list looked at cities based on a variety of factors including five-year income growth per household, cost of living, employment data and -- you guessed it -- crime statistics, which was a factor that contributed to its Most Dangerious Cities rankings.

Maybe this means the good outweighs the bad in Little Rock. It certainly means that there's more (or less) to these lists than first meets the eye.

Executives at Wal-Mart are re-thinking the retailer's operations in China.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart is restructuring its operations in that giant, emerging market. The newspaper says the changes might result in pay cuts and possibly job losses affecting about 2.5 percent of its local work force -- about 1,400 people.

The changes come to the five-teir management system Wal-Mart uses in China. Wal-Mart says it's trying to make things run more efficiently and promote growth.

Forbes magazine has once again published some great linkbait. This time, it's a list of "America's Most Livable Cities." The Little Rock MSA ranked No. 15. Portland, Maine, is No. 1.

What's the criteria for making the list? 

To form our list, we looked at quality of life measures in the nation's largest continental U.S. metropolitan statistical areas--geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for use by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics. We eliminated areas with populations smaller than 500,000 and assigned points to the remaining metro regions across five data sets: Five-year income growth per household and cost of living from Moody's Economy.com, crime data and leisure index from Sperling's Best Places, and annual unemployment statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Click here to see Little Rock's profile, along with a lovely shot of the state Capitol parking lot. Picturesque!

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., having already affected the prescription drug industry with its $4 generic drug pricing, is set to turn everything on its head again with a drug pricing program that works directly with employers.

The Bentonville-based retail giant is already working on a pilot program with Caterpillar Inc. (which soon will have its own manufacturing plant in North Little Rock). According to the Chicago Tribune:

The Wal-Mart contract waives the $5 co-payment for Caterpillar employees on any generic drugs if they purchase them at a Wal-Mart or Sam's Club pharmacy. By giving workers an incentive to fill prescriptions at Wal-Mart rather than another pharmacy, the retailer not only beefs up its pharmacy business, but also attracts more shoppers into the store, where they might make other purchases.

The most radical aspect of the test, however, is the threat of unraveling how the health-care industry buys and sells prescription drugs.

Under the initiative that began in October, Peoria-based Caterpillar has a contract to buy prescription drugs for employees directly from Wal-Mart and has a third-party audit system in place to make sure that prices aren't inflated.

That process contrasts with the way most employers purchase drugs, through a middleman, known as a pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM.

Last week, Wal-Mart said it was in talks with another firm about similar programs. According to a Zack's research note, Wal-Mart's entry into the PBM market is not "insignificant," and could put pricing pressures on PBM players like Medco Health Solutions and others.

It's another way the retail change is a game-changer an industries outside discount retail.

Has Wal-Mart moved into your town? Is its massive power draining your business? The Wall Street Journal's Independent Street blog has some tips on how you can fight the retail giant:

1. Supermarkets should offer deeper promotions and begin selling a higher percentage of top-tier national brands and private labels.
2. Drug stores should offer frequent promotions on a wide assortment of products and increase the total variety of products they sell.
3. Mass merchandisers, though, have no choice but to reduce prices but not reduce the assortment of their products.

The complete post here, including results from an academic study that concluded that when a Wal-Mart comes to town, trying to compete with it by cutting prices doesn't help.

KTHV reports that layoffs are headed to IC Corp. in Conway:

Ray Wiley, a spokesman for IC's parent company, Navistar in Warrenville, Illinois, says he won't know for a couple of days how many people will be out of a job, but it will happen by the end of March.

 

Also by the end of the month, IC will be producing only 8 buses per day. Wiley says one customer alone cancelled an order for more than 250 units due to the economy.

More.

Update: The Log Cabin Democrat has even more here.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which outperforming most retailers, isn't resting. It's moving forward on two fronts to capitalize on various opportunities.

First, with an expanded customer base thanks to tough economic times, the retailer is looking to expand its public relations initiatives, according to the Wall Street Journal:

In a sign that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to capitalize on its sales strength in the recession, the retailer is in the process of hiring five public relations firms to better promote its products, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer plans to put the firms on retainer and then have them bid on individual projects, an effort by the notoriously frugal retailer to contain costs. This strategy is becoming more common in the advertising industry as businesses attempt to rein in marketing budgets amid falling revenues.

The five agencies will carve up work previously handled almost entirely by Edelman, a large, privately held, public relations agency headquartered in New York and Chicago.

"Wal-Mart is currently talking to a number of public relations agencies to support consumer communications for Wal-Mart US," Wal-Mart said in a statement. "Candidate agencies that may join the roster have already been identified and vetted."

Meanwhile, the retailer is slipping into the electronic health records market, with the Obama administration looking to promote digital medical records with $19 billion in the stimulus package, according to Reuters:

Wal-Mart Stores is striding into the market for electronic health records, seeking to bring the technology into the mainstream for physicians in small offices, where most of America's doctors practice medicine.

Wal-Mart's move comes as the Obama administration is trying to jumpstart the adoption of digital medical records with $19 billion of incentives in the stimulus package.

The company plans to team its Sam's Club division with Dell for computers and eClinicalWorks, a fast-growing private company, for software. Wal-Mart says its package deal of hardware, software, installation, maintenance and training will make the technology more accessible and affordable, undercutting rival health information technology suppliers by as much as half.

"We're a high-volume, low-cost company," said Marcus Osborne, senior director of health care business development at Wal-Mart. "And I would argue that mentality is sorely lacking in the health care industry."

The Sam's Club offering, to be made available this spring, will be under $25,000 for the first physician in a practice, and about $10,000 for each additional doctor. After the installation and training, the continuing annual costs for maintenance and support will be $4,000 to $6,500 a year, the company estimates.

Dillard's Inc. of Little Rock is closing another store, this one in Austin, Texas, as it continues to examine its operations, cut costs and shut down underperforming locations.

The Dillard's store, which employs about 130 people, is in the city's Highland Mall. Dillard's tells the Austin Business Journal that it will close within the next few weeks.

Dillard's plans to open only 2 stores in all of 2009, down from the 10 stores it opened in 2008.

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• WSJ: Wal-Mart to Restructure in China
• Little Rock Among Forbes' Most Livable Cities
• Wal-Mart, Caterpilla Drug Program A Preview of Retailer's Strategy
• How Small Business Can Fight Wal-Mart
• KTHV: IC Corp. Layoffs Coming
• Wal-Mart to Expand PR, Delve into Digital Health Records
• Dillard's to Close Austin, Texas Store

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