A Wall Street Journal article (March 21, 2011) describes adjustments to Wal-Mart’s strategies to increase the number of shoppers who do one-stop shopping at the store. Wal-Mart’s US chief, William Simon, claims that as gas prices increase, shoppers will be more inclined to do one stop shopping. But WalMart’s attempts to prune its product assortment and reduce restocking to save store labor costs have impact in stock levels for merchandise and annoyed suppliers. The store plans to make assortment adjustements, decrease items that may improve appearance but increase costs and not be valued and also rethink sustainability initiatives that were not cost effective for the store and consumer.  Is this a case of retail assortment being cut too far comapred to the optimal for the supply chain ? Will buy online and pick up at stores be a channel to revert sales decline ? Will the surging commodity prices make big retailers with larger spends more attractive to consumers because of their ability to leverage global supply chains and pool risk ?