We’ve seen a busy couple of weeks in the retail industry. Walmart US’s CEO, Bill Simon abruptly resigned and was replaced by the company’s head of Asian oprations, Greg Foran. Target found its new CEO in Brian Cornell, currently at PepsiCo and formerly a retail executive at Michael’s and BJ’s Wholesale Club. Not to be outdone, the Dollar stores got in on the action. Dollar Tree announced the acquisition of Family Dollar in an all-stock deal, creating an $18 billion, 13,000 store behemoth.

That’s a lot of action for the dog days of summer. As you might expect, retail pundits including me weighed in on the decisions.

Forbes contributor and industry icon Walter Loeb wrote the most pointed article about the Walmart management change. The title says it all: “It’s About Time: Walmart’s Simon Unexpectedly Stepping Down. “ OOF. That’s harsh. But since Walter actually knew Sam Walton and watched the chain grow, he’s very qualified to opine on the state of Walmart and what it needs to do to make things right. Like me, he doubts that the company can change its trajectory. It is so over-large and bureaucratic, it’s hard to imagine it turning itself in a new direction. Andrew Thomas writes in IndustryWeek that he can’t envision any scenario where Walmart can change its ways. That one, I’m not so sure about. Any company can change once it recognizes it has to. Just look at the US car companies.

Then there’s Target. While people like me were writing helpful suggestions of things he should do out of the gate (me in Forbes, and Hadley Malcolm in USA Today, to name just two) it turns out Mr. Cornell had his own idea. He showed up at Target’s headquarters and stood in the lobby shaking hands with any and all associates who wanted to meet him. Given his entry into an ostensibly closed culture it strikes me as a brilliant move.

Of course he still really does have a lot to do…most retail watchers know he’s got to support the reinvigoration of home goods and apparel, oversee stronger security measures, and regain the company’s reputation for cool stuff cheap. That’s a large task. I believe he’ll get a full year to get the ship turned around…after all, the die for this holiday season is pretty well cast, merchandise-wise. I just hope he remembers that food was never Target’s core competency. It may be a traffic driver, but it’s not a profit generator, and truth be told, in many ways it’s a distraction from Target’s value proposition.

Finally we move to the Dollar Store mega-merger. Family Dollar and Dollar Tree are not the same. Dollar Tree really does have a ‘unit price’ of $1 for every single thing they sell, even though they don’t necessarily sell them in a quantity of one. Family Dollar isn’t like that at all. It’s basically a low-price, discount retailer. There was no talk of combining the banners as a result of the merger. Instead, there was talk of eliminating redundancies and finding synergies, which should ultimately drive a savings run rate of $300 million by the third year. I might be a Negative Nancy, but that doesn’t strike me as a blockbuster deal.

I don’t even pretend to understand if those synergies will come from treating IT as a shared service. A review of each company’s installed systems gleaned from Sophia, IHL Group’s retail technology database, seems to indicate Family Dollar has the more sophisticated technology portfolio. In areas where both are strong, they use different packages. I would personally be hard-pressed to choose between the different solutions.

Racing On. When I look at these three events it reminds me of one thing — all these companies are active leaders in the Race to the Bottom. Earlier and earlier promotions, greater discounts, Thanksgiving Day openings, dares to competitors to meet their prices — they’ve hit all the high and low points. Walmart continues to pound on the low price theme and defiantly open stores in locations where they really aren’t wanted, and Target…well, I’m honestly not sure what Target stands for right now. We’ll have to see what comes next.

And while the dollar stores may be staying more true to their roots, one has to wonder about the ability to scale these stores into the 20,000 door range. At some point the scalability just gives out.

Retail Winners just don’t do these things. Those who consistently succeed practice strategies of product and customer service differentiation. They care for their human resource assets. In an exquisite irony, one Wall Street analyst who was opining on the Walmart management change said “We really like Costco for the long term. “ This is the retailer that is routinely pummeled for its employee practices.

Everybody likes a bargain. It’s human nature, or so it seems. But bargains just aren’t enough to satisfy the masses. The consequences of the Race to the Bottom are short-term unit sale gains and long term revenue deficiencies. They may be masked by expense reductions for a while, but sooner or later there’s no more to cut.

I really hope these new leaders will start to change the game. Consequences of not changing it are becoming clear. Here’s hoping we see a new generation of retail giants next year.