Eduardo Castro-Wright on Wal-Mart’s US Store Strategy

I admit I don’t spend much time in Walmart (about 30 minutes per year, usually when traveling and I need some small item), but the store shown in the video seems pretty much the same as the ones before the big change to me.

Changing the lighting and lowering the height of the shelves doesn’t take away from the fact that the place looks like an industrial plant. It’s impersonal, cold and uninviting. The history of retail has been to make shopping a pleasant experience, just look at the efforts that Macy’s or Whole Foods puts into store design.

One is supposed to buy into the fiction that shopping in a airplane hangar keeps prices down, but this gimmick wears off quickly. Where are the white box “generic” groceries that were such a big fad a few years ago? People got tired of them, they weren’t much cheaper and they didn’t tell you anything about the product.

People shop at Walmart because the have to, or at least think they have to. The management knows this, but, apparently, they can bamboozle a WSJ reporter into stating otherwise.

Of course the current economy is the result of Wal-Mart’s sales boost! When you are pinching pennies, naturally you have to go where the prices are low. But when things turn around, I expect Wal-Mart’s sales boost is going downhill again.
By the way I remember those white box generic groceries. They were awful. I suspect people would have kept buying them if they had been better. But I remember throwing out an entire box of 100 tea bags. I tried the first cup and had never tasted anything so awful!
No matter what Wal-Mart does it is always going to be an impersonal big box.  No heart, feelings, etc. Just treat all your customers like cattle. If we provide cheap goods, then people will continue to shop our stores. And will they mind being treated like cattle? Apparently not, as we will draw them in with our low prices.
Want to be treated like cattle? Just become a regular Wal-Mart customer!

Jane,

“When you are pinching pennies, naturally you have to go where the prices are low. But when things turn around, I expect Wal-Mart’s sales boost is going downhill again.”

So, you admit, that Wal-Mart has the lowest prices, right?  If not, and people are ‘pinching pennies’, wouldn’t they go to the ‘lowest’ priced stores?  And, so you think that once the economy picks up, people will go back to ‘blowing’ their money at ‘higher priced stores’, right?

“If we provide cheap goods, then people will continue to shop our stores.”

You finally figured it out!!  There is a huge crowd of people who know that you can’t ‘eat’ or ‘use’ fancy store surroundings and would rather Save Money, than to waste it on ‘Higher Prices’ at a Fancy Store!!

“Apparently not, as we will draw them in with our low prices.”

See, I told you that you were starting to understand!!

draw them in with our low prices

Starting to understand? Exploitation of Wal-Mart’s price point (loss leader) policy has long been a mainstay of the Anti Wal-Mart Movement.

The trick is getting consumers to just buy the loss leaders and not get suckered into thinking Wal-Mart has the lowest price on everything. If Wal-Mart is willing to sell at their cost or below then I say more power to ‘em.

And use coupons. Wal-Mart hates coupons!

Actually, Wal-Mart is not always the lowest in price. A PBS documentary titled “Is Wal-Mart Good For America?” explains Wal-Mart’s pricing. And as the story goes PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING.
An ex Wal-Mart manager explains it this way. The real bargain priced stuff is on separate displays in the aisles. You go into Wal-Mart looking for a microwave. You find a separate display in the aisle with a particular microwave selling for $29.98. This is not exactly what you are looking for so you go to where the rest of them are. (This $29.98 microwave is the real bargain by the way.)
But when you find the rest of the microwaves YOU ASSUME THEY ARE ALL BARGAIN PRICED, BUT THIS IS NOT TRUE. If you were to do some checking you would find that other retailers have the same price on their microwaves as Wal-Mart or are lower in price.
But once you are in Wal-Mart you ASSUME ALL MICROWAVES ARE BARGAIN PRICED SO YOU GET IT THERE.
Who actually bothers to check around with other retailers? Hardly anyone as many are too pressed for time today.
Wal-Mart has for years given customers the PERCEPTION that everything they sell is bargain priced. But that’s a lie.
The authors of a book called “The Myth Of Excellence” did some checking in Wal-Mart. They compared Wal-Mart’s prices with other retailers. In some instances they found customers saved only 2 CENTS ON SOME ITEMS. Some bargain priced stuff huh?
Wal-Mart has cost our country. We have lost jobs overseas, seen them suck the life out of communities, lower the standard of living for their employees, treat suppliers like garbage, and the list goes on.
I suspect when the economy eventually turns around Wal-Mart will see their same store sales decrease. And I also suspect many who shop there now wish they didn’t have to. They only go there because they can’t afford to go anyplace else.
Ken has it right. What is good for Wal-Mart is bad for America!!

Ken V,

“Exploitation of Wal-Mart’s price point (loss leader) policy has long been a mainstay of the Anti Wal-Mart Movement.”

And, how do they do that, if they DON’T shop at Wal-Mart and NEVER step a foot in Wal-Mart?

Jane,

“YOU ASSUME THEY ARE ALL BARGAIN PRICED”

And, what is it they say about people who ASSUME?

“Who actually bothers to check around with other retailers?”

People who are concerned about getting the best ‘Bang’ for their ‘hard-earned’ bucks and don’t ASSUME things!!  Remember, SAVING money is as good as EARNING it (A penny saved, is a penny earned)!!

“And I also suspect many who shop there now wish they didn’t have to. They only go there because they can’t afford to go anyplace else.”

You keep saying that, but, if Wal-Mart isn’t the ‘cheapest’ place to shop, why can’t the people AFFORD to go to the ones that ARE ‘cheaper’?  Why is it that they HAVE TO shop at Wal-Mart?

And, how do they do that...(?)

What you fail to understand, RDS, is only a small fraction of the Anti Wal-Mart Movement is comprised of boycotters.

There’s more than one way to skin the Beast of Bentonville.

Society of Manufacturing Engineers

Release date: August 5, 2008

New SME Conference Offers Data Solutions from Wal-Mart, Boeing, Tyson and Others
DEARBORN, Mich., August 5, 2008 - Manufacturers around the world have turned to automated identification technologies for inventory control and material handling functions. However, many find themselves with more data than they know what to do with.

To help manufacturers make sense of this data, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) is bringing the world’s foremost experts in RFID and other automated data collection technologies to its first-ever Manufacturing Data Management Conference, November 11-12, 2008, at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods, Boeing and others will share their best practices and attendees will learn how to transfer these successes into manufacturing solutions.

“RFID has entered a new era. We’re no longer talking about just how the technology works, but what challenges it will help us solve.” said SME’s Executive Director and General Manager Mark C. Tomlinson. “By learning from leaders like Wal-Mart and others, manufacturers can develop their own innovative processes for increasing productivity, controlling inventory and managing supply chains through the use of technology.”

The conference was developed by SME members and representatives from Wal-Mart, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, the University of Texas-San Antonio, RFID Global Solutions, RFID Switchboard and Baxter Healthcare. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By learning from leaders like Wal-Mart...

Believing Bentonville is willing to share it’s “innovative processes” with the world may be a little optimistic.

Wal-Mart’s database is so HUGE it has coined the term ‘data warehouse’.

“Wal-Mart’s database is so HUGE it has coined the term ‘data warehouse’.”

Really?.... WALMART has coined the term “DATA WAREHOUSE”.  I think the developers from IBM would take issue with that FALSE statement.  Making up stories again I see Ken.

Mary - 1, Ken - 0

In 1988, IBM researchers Barry Devlin and Paul Murphy coined the term information warehouse, and IT shops began building experimental data warehouses.

Better check again, big fella…

Who else has a </i>data warehouse</i> besides Wal-Mart?
The Pentagon maybe.

But Wal-Mart being Wal-Mart, its not saying much. While confirming that it does even now have the worlds largest datawarehouse—

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/At-WalMart-Worlds-Largest-Retail-Data-Warehouse-Gets-Even-Larger/

Mary - 1, ddrb - 1, Ken - 0

Big difference between WM “confirming that it does even now have the worlds largest data warehouse” and actually coining the term.

C’mon, give credit where it’s due!

Big difference...

To whom?

I never gave credit to Wal-Mart for coining the term. Wal-Mart’s data system is so large and complex the term ‘data base’ no longer applies. Data warehouse is used instead.

...Barry Devlin and Paul Murphy...

I’d be careful using Wikipedia, bb, they are not always reliable.

Behind a fence topped with razor wire just off U.S. Highway 71 is a bunker of a building that Wal-Mart considers so secret that it won’t even let the county assessor inside without a nondisclosure agreement.

I’d be careful using Wikipedia, bb, they are not always reliable.

Unlike some of your motley crew, Wikipedia is not my first choice when it comes to references.

Go back to the post and click my name, and you’ll get the source (guess I should’ve mentioned that, too, huh?).

“I’d be careful using Wikipedia, bb, they are not always reliable.”

Yeah, bb, don’t you know that Wikipedia is only reliable when used by an anti Wal-Marter as their FACT base?  But, of course, it is not always reliable if a pro Wal-Marter uses it!!

“I never gave credit to Wal-Mart for coining the term.” ~ Ken

“Wal-Mart’s database is so HUGE it has coined the term ‘data warehouse’.” ~ Ken

Mary - 1, ddrb - 1, Ken - 0

“I never gave credit to Wal-Mart for coining the term.”

““Wal-Mart’s database is so HUGE it has coined the term ‘data warehouse’.”

You’re kidding me… right Ken?  But I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.  It’s just Ken making up stories AGAIN then better yet having to lie to try and cover his tracks.  It’s ashame the facts aren’t on his side, but they rarely are.

Wal-Mart’s database is so HUGE it is called a ‘data warehouse’. The use of the word ‘coined’ was inappropriate.

I go away for a couple of days and this is the best you can come up with?

So don’t give a thought, boys and girls, to the fact Wal-Mart has the largest data handling, mining, and manipulating capability on the planet. All that personal information they collect on you will only be used to offer you the best possible
choices.

“I can live with losing the good fight, but I can’t live with not fighting it.” ~ Leslie Bair

“I go away for a couple of days and this is the best you can come up with? “

You started the thread Ken.  At least you admit to the stupidity and lies in your post.  As for the “best you can come up wtih”.... not even close, but when YOU open yourself up to the deceipt it’s not easy to ignore.

...stupidity and lies..

You sound a little desperate, Mary.

Besides the misuse of the word ‘coined’, I’d appreciate you pointing out the “stupidity and lies” in my post.

Wal-Mart has the largest datawarehouse on the planet. (not a lie)

Wal-Mart uses this massive amount of information for it’s own purposes. (not a lie)

Wal-Mart has a secret building on Hwy 71. (not a lie)

“Besides the misuse of the word ‘coined’, I’d appreciate you pointing out the “stupidity and lies” in my post. “

That’s easy.

Lie #1… ““Wal-Mart’s database is so HUGE it has coined the term ‘data warehouse’.”

Lie #2… “I never gave credit to Wal-Mart for coining the term.”

Stupidity #1… Fabricating stories to fit your agenda.

Stupidity #2… Creating a 2nd like to cover up the first lie when I thought you would have been smart enough to realize that your words were in full print for people to see.  That my friend is stupidity.

That my friend is stupidity.

Are we friends, Mary?

Wal-Mart’s data warehouse is larger than 4 petabytes. What the Hell is a petabyte you may well ask? The progression goes like this: megabytes, gigabytes, tetrabytes, and petabytes. A petabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one quadrillion bytes.

Ken V,

“Wal-Mart has the largest datawarehouse on the planet.”

It would only make sense, that the LARGEST company on the planet, would have the LARGEST database!!

“Wal-Mart uses this massive amount of information for it’s own purposes.”

Would you expect them to use the data for someone else’s purposes?

“Wal-Mart has a secret building on Hwy 71.”

The fact that YOU know about it and it’s location, would show that it isn’t very SECRET!!  And, if it IS secret, how would anyone know the size of the database, for you to comment on it?  Once people know about something, it’s no longer a SECRET!!

It would only make sense, that the LARGEST company on the planet, would have the LARGEST database!!

Larger than a GOVERNMENT? Larger than the Pentagon, IBM or Microsoft?

Sorry, RDS, but an overblown haberdasher having the largest datawarehouse on the planet does not “make sense”.

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All that personal information they collect on you...

Personal information?  What personal information? 

If you’re really hung-up on the privacy thing, pay with cash, instead of plastic…

Grocery chains - now, that’s another story.  Those “loyalty cards” they offer contain enough of the customer’s personal info on the account to do the same things Kenbo claims WM is doing…

I’m going to coin this one “Stupidity #3”!

YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE …
Supermarket cards
threat to privacy?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Privacy advocates say a wealth of data is being collected by supermarkets via electronic shopper cards and that the information could be linked with other biometric technology to form in-depth personal databases without a person’s permission or knowledge.

Katherine Albrecht, executive director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, or CASPIAN, says first and foremost that there is nothing “benign” about emerging shopper card programs and technologies.

“There are some long-term, potentially creepy consequences of allowing [supermarkets] to collect data on people,” she told WorldNetDaily.

“Some of the more obvious short-term privacy concerns are that the information is subpoenaed and used against people in court,” she said. “There was even a story recently saying the FBI was trying to profile the Sept. 11 terrorists on the basis of their shopper card records.”

“This idea of actually being profiled as a result of our shopping records is a scary proposition,” said Albrecht, who holds a Master’s degree in education from Harvard.

What’s the big deal?

CASPIAN says the thing it hears most from nonplussed consumers who use the cards is this: “What’s the big deal? I’m not doing anything wrong or buying anything illegal.”

But that’s the wrong way to look at it, says Albrecht, because that’s not really what the card programs are about.

“The point is that there are many, many things that nobody’s got any business knowing about anybody else. That’s called privacy – the right to an unfettered, unmonitored personal life which is not subject to the scrutiny of others,” she said.
.

“Prominent among the various measures being considered are the use of devices that check a person’s identity using biometric identifiers such as fingerprints, retina or facial patterns,” says the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based public-interest research group.

“There are significant privacy and civil-liberties concerns regarding the use of such devices that must be addressed before any widespread deployment,” said the group.

Specifically, EPIC wants to know how the data is to be stored – whether centrally or dispersed – and how the data scanned should be retained. Also, the group says its important to know how vulnerable that data will be to theft and abuse.

And, EPIC says, the public should be concerned about how foolproof the technology will be – how much of an error factor in the technologies’ authentication process is acceptable, as well as the implications of false positives and false negatives created by a machine.

Also, issues of data authenticity should be examined, as well as whether the data gathered will be linked with other data to form profiles and the full implications of “having an electronic trail of our every movement. …”

Informational abuse?

Albrecht and others worry about plans afoot to utilize information being collected by supermarkets for other life-managing purposes.

“It’s not far in the future when all this information is going to fall into the hands of, say, insurance corporations,” she said. “Software programs already exist and are in place to take this shopping information and link it up with particular diseases, such as high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.”

She says the insurance companies will then “evaluate how well” people shop “in relation to what your health concerns are.”

The implications are clear, she says. “Insurance companies will use this information against you when making decisions about your policy.”

Others agree.

Americans are under “wholesale attacks from overly zealous law enforcement officials determined to have access to telephone conversation, e-mail or other electronic communication,” says the American Civil Liberties Union.

Besides government, people face privacy assaults “from private sector interests that want access to intimate information about you, including your medical records, either for commercial purposes or to challenge your insurance eligibility or employment suitability,” the ACLU says.

(Continued) Indeed, advances in information technology, while beneficial to improving daily life, have also proven to be a boon for government and private entities. And in each case of informational abuse, the cause of defending privacy seems to be increasingly a losing proposition.

Among the abuses documented recently by the ACLU:

A Maryland banker improperly accessed the medical records of bank customers to see who had been diagnosed with cancer. Armed with this information, the bank immediately foreclosed on their loans.

A recent University of Illinois study found that 35 percent of all Fortune 500 companies consult medical records before they hire or promote an employee.

A 1997 survey by the American Management Association found that as many as 10 percent of 6,000 companies used genetic testing for employment purposes.

The Council for Responsible Genetics, an advocacy group in Massachusetts, has documented hundreds of cases in which healthy people have been denied insurance or a job based on genetic “predictions.”
Orwellian predictions aside, many experts and ordinary citizens alike believe such schemes like shopper cards and electronic data retention are thinly veiled plans to exert more control over a population used to freedom and independence.

“The food business is far and away the most important business in the world,” Dwayne Andreas, CEO of Archer-Daniels-Midland, one of the nation’s largest food conglomerates, told Reuters in 1999. “Everything else is a luxury. Food is what you need to sustain life every day. Food is fuel. You can’t run a tractor without fuel, and you can’t run a human being without it either. Food is the absolute beginning.”

In terms of guiding discussion about such technological changes, “it is almost heresy to ask if these changes are what the people of our country really want or, if they are not what is desired, how we might redirect the change,” says William Heffernan, a professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri.

“These changes are the result of notoriously short-sighted market forces and not the result of public dialogue, the foundation of a democracy. Neither are the changes the result of some mystical figure or an ‘invisible hand,’” he told CounterPunch magazine.

“The potential for abuse of all this information is enormous,” Albrecht concluded.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------J.Dougherty,WNDWalMart is a founding

.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: WalMart is a founding member of Dossia, an electronic medical record keeping system(in conjunction with other large corporations),and, Eduardo Castor Wright-the subject of this thread topic,was recently named to the Board of Directors of Metropolitaln Life Insurance Corporation.

Society of Manufacturing Engineers
New SME Conference Offers Data Solutions from Wal-Mart, BOEING,Tyson and Others
DEARBORN, Mich., August 5, 2008 - Manufacturers around the world have turned to automated identification technologies for inventory control and material handling functions. However, many find themselves with more data than they know what to do with.

To help manufacturers make sense of this data, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) is bringing the world’s foremost experts in RFID and other automated data collection technologies to its first-ever Manufacturing Data Management Conference, November 11-12, 2008, at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods, BOEING and others will share their best practices and attendees will learn how to transfer these successes into manufacturing solutions. ~~~~~~~~~~~~Speaking of Boeing,WalMart’s CURRENT Vice President of Corporate Affairs was FORMERLY Boeing China,Inc. CEO:

Testimony of Raymond W. Bracy
Business Director, Asia Pacific
President, Boeing China, Inc.

Before the House Banking and Financial Services Committee
February 3, 1998 (Excerpt)

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee. My name is Ray Bracy. For the past year, I have managed the Asia Pacific sales portfolio of The Boeing Company’s Commercial Airplane Group and will soon be Boeing’s chief epresentative in China.  Our work in Asia taught us the importance of relationships. We have an opportunity to strengthen those relationships through our words and our deeds.

For example, we need to acknowledge and reinforce the critical role that China is playing by integrating China more deeply into multilateral institutions such as the global trading system. We need to maintain U.S. support for open trade and resist the temptation to adopt” trade-restricting policies” to accommodate the anticipated influx of imports into the U.S. market. ~~~~~~~~~Note: Raymond Bracy is listed on current,2008,the FEC lobbyist documents for WalMart. It appears that our government was successful beyond wildest dreams in resisting” trade restricting policies” with regards to imports in the ten years since Bracy made those public statements.

BTW: -Wal-Mart Vice President of Corporate Affairs Raymond Bracy is listed on the reporting form as the company’s lobbyist. The form shows he also lobbied regarding a variety of tax issues and on legislation regarding Chinese imports and China’s currency.~~~~~~WMW~~~Why does that not sound reassuring to me?