Wal-Mart thinks it finally understands its customers; they divide into three groups

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: It’s Not Only About Price at Wal-Mart
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: March 2, 2007

For 44 years, Wal-Mart’s message was “Low prices, always.”

Then in early 2006, it invited customers to “Look beyond the basics,” and try costlier products like 500-thread count sheets.

Now, after a tumultuous year of experimentation, abrupt reversals and admissions of missteps, Wal-Mart Stores is finding its raison d’être in the middle of these two extremes: “Saving people money so they can live better lives.”

The new, and so far internal, definition of what Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, stands for will soon become a very public strategy, evident on the shelves of 4,000 stores and in advertisements seen across the country.

In their first interviews since a management shuffle last month, John Fleming, the new chief merchandising officer, and Stephen Quinn, the new chief marketing officer, said that after a year of intense research, the discount giant is seeing its 200 million customers as belonging to three groups.

There are “brand aspirationals” (people with low incomes who are obsessed with names like KitchenAid), “price-sensitive affluents” (wealthier shoppers who love deals), and “value-price shoppers” (who like low prices and cannot afford much more).

The new categories are significant because for the first time, Wal-Mart thinks it finally understands not just how people shop at its stores, but why they shop the way they do.

The recalibration might seem subtle. But when the company is Wal-Mart, whose $345 billion in sales exceeds those of its next four rivals combined, the stakes are unusually high, especially for Mr. Fleming and Mr. Quinn....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/business/02walmart.html

[Fridays Child]

1. Maybe I'll go have a look, when...

...their employees can live better lives.

[Sadie4629]

7. They're discussing building a Wal-Mart here

There goes our quaint little downtown.

[Mind_your_head]

2. LOL eom

[TygrBright]

3. Oh. look... they're trying a new shade of lipstick...

...on the same old oinker.

Yeh, that'll work.


skeptically,
Bright

[w4rma]

4. What is this? An advertisement for Wal-Mart? (nt)

[DeepModem Mom]

5. No, it's an article from a Business Section. While it doesn't address...

the issues we have with Wal-Mart, I thought their strategizing, and the three groups they came up with, were of interest. Personally, I've been to the Wal-Mart in the town I've lived in for two years only once, to get something I couldn't get elsewhere for an injured family member. Otherwise, I don't go there.

[Sherman A1]

6. Agreed

It is a very interesting look inside the thinking of this powerhouse. Even if none of us shop there, it has a great affect on the places we do shop, by depressing wages and workers benefits at those stores as well.

[sinkingfeeling]

8. They can call me a 'will not walk through the door of anything owned by Wal-Mar' visionary!

[DeepModem Mom]

9. LOL! nt

[ginnyinWI]

10. I'm the kind of shopper who

can afford to shop in places other than Walmart, and usually do. Sometimes I have to resort to Walmart when I can't find something anywhere else, and have looked in maybe six other stores. What scares me is that this will happen more and more often as businesses fail to survive next to Walmart.