wal-mart

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Think Bigger.

June 3, 2010 in Marketing | 0 Comments

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 3 American adults is obese. Excuse the pun, but that’s a huge market.  Are airlines doing anything about it?  Yep, seatbelt extenders.  On a plane in coach when the person in front of you puts back their seat, if you have a big belly, you can’t open your laptop. You can’t open your laptop if you have a medium belly.

Besides clothing there are a ton of products that can be redesigned to fit the big form person. Beach chairs, lawn chairs, living room chairs.  Moving theaters should provide adequate seating for larger adults. Big is big business…just ask NBC.

Wal-Mart or JC Penny’s would be smart to create a store brand catering to the big. Peace! 

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The Future of Retail.

March 19, 2010 in Marketing | 0 Comments

Barnes and Noble just appointed the head of its web business CEO. Does that tell you something?  Yeah, yeah…it says increased digital emphasis.  But let me ask you a question: Do you shop at Sam’s Club, Costco or one of the other big box warehouse stores? How about Wal-Mart?  If so, does that store have a greater share of your wallet (SOW) than other stores?  I suspect so.

When Stephen Riggio the vice chairman of Barnes and Noble says that for the next 2 years the “net number of stores will not change much” and after that “we’ll have to see” what does that tell you? Certainly a push to digital, but I’m also thinking he’s referring to a retail square footage play.  Some of the cheapest books I ever bought were at Costco.

Future of Retail.

Here’s the future of retail – and we may see it happen first in China.  The Costcos of the world will create low cost mall like mega stores under one roof with branded experiences for companies such as Barnes and Noble throughout. The experiences will be much less elaborate than at home stores.  The floors will be concrete, the mobile search sublime, prices wonderful and it will all, no doubt, occur under a vinyl banner with a bird or two circling overhead. Check-out will be done with scanners and the hardest part of shopping will be getting to your car.  This isn’t the Jetsons, it’s the retail future.  I think Messrs. Riggio and Lynch are already there, in mind.  Peace!

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Amazon Vs. Wal-Mart

November 24, 2009 in Marketing | 0 Comments

amazon box

There’s a big war a brewin’ between Amazon and Wal-Mart. Supposedly, it’s a holiday season price skirmish, but really it’s a war for the future of shopping.

Amazon, whose sales are a fraction of Wal-Mart’s, owns the online shopping space. Walmart.com is growing faster than Amazon, but those are just statistics, which we know can lie. This shopping war is between online and offline. Currently, online shopping accounts for about 4% of all sales, but some projection see it moving as high as 15%.

You know who loves to shop online? Single, twenty 20 and 30 year olds –especially the ones who are kicking ass in their jobs. In a brief recently, I called this target “Power-Ups.” They’re achievers, very wired, and have big careers in their sights. After work, Power-Ups like to come home to someone…but the someone they come home to every night is often a box from Amazon. “Honey, I’m home!” This target will marry and marry well, and in addition to being conditioned to buy online, they will buy high margin products. A value target to be sure.

Amazon knows this. Jeff Bezos knows this. When these 20 and 30 years olds become 40 and 50 year olds, they’ll still be loyal customers and have passed on the Amazon online shopping gene to their progeny.

Wal-Mart can plan all they want, but in my mind they won’t be able to be a leader in both online shopping and offline shopping. You can’t be black and white. Very, very interesting. Don’t be surprised if Wal-Mart starts sniffing around Amazon with checkbook in hand.

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Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Index

July 16, 2009 in Marketing | 0 Comments

Wal-Mart’s sustainability index, reported today in The New York Times, is an important step in the right direction. Labels indicating a product’s eco-friendliness will help consumers with decision-making at the point-of-sale (POS). The index reflects things like carbon emitted, water used, recyclability, air pollution, etc. 

 

In NYC’s commuter railroad hub, Penn Station, all fast food is now labeled with caloric intake. This mandate is another smart move already having an impact on POS product selection.  The latter idea has been legislated, the Wal-Mart idea is their own. (Bravo NYC and Wal-Mart.) 

 

Change doesn’t always come easy. There are still people out there who don’t care about nasty, fatty calories. There are still people out there who won’t mind bringing poorly indexing products to the counter at Wal-Mart. (BTW, I’m thinking the index should be color-coded: green, yellow, red).  In fact, there are still doofuses who throw their trash out the window of their cars. But as derision grows and our culture finds these behaviors less acceptable, change will occur. 

(And can we lose the word “sustainability” and call it “green” for goodness sake?) Peace!

 

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No crying over spilt…

June 30, 2008 in Marketing | 0 Comments

 

 
David Maxwell for The New York Times

Some big box stores have redesigned the gallon milk carton and consumers are up in arms. The new boxy cartons are not easy to pour and often result in the spilling of some milk. “What the…?” say new users while sloshing these oblong vessels. Trainers are now stationed near the milk area in Wal-Mart and Costco teaching grumpy buyers the new “rock and pour” technique.

 
Why are we to be inconvenienced by this new boxy gallon design?  Why must we retrain ourselves in the pour? It is simple: gallon jugs are expense to make, stock, ship, clean, load and shelve. They are inefficient and are an amazing energy suck. These forward thinking companies deserve our applause.  We should learn from them.  All us us need to be a more thoughtful of energy consumption. And if it requires a little inconvenience or a little retraining I’m all for it. 
 
(Try this one — next time you are at the deli buying a sandwich say “No paper bag please.” Got to start somewhere.)
 

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On the Fence About MySpace Music

April 4, 2008 in Marketing | 0 Comments

For the life of me I can’t figure out how MySpace’s big music announcement with Universal Music Group, Warner Music and Sony BMG is going to play out. The geezer planner in me says it is headed for disaster, because MySpace is about friends, not selling music. And whenever a property thinks they know more than their customers about being a consumer, they fall into traps.  If given a choice to buy Music from Apple, maker of the iPod, or MySpace maker of “thanks for the add,” I’d choose Apple. But look how Wal-Mart ascended in music downloads. 
 
The strategy of selling music in all device formats is smart, though it hasn’t driven crazy growth at Amazon. The strategy of 360 degree deals, selling all band purchase-ables: tees, tix, loads, pix, vids, is also smart. And convenient. And after “friends,” music is a big driver of traffic to MySpace, and therefore consumers have in a sense already voted for music as a MySpace app. Hmm.
 
But bringing in three labels, notorious competitors, and then stirring up the bees nest of small indies (a franchise) vs. the big labels and that will create cause some anomy. More hmm.
 
Though I’m kind of on the fence here, I’m going to say, it will be a small bust.  News Corp. will putz this thing up because there will be too many cooks in the kitchen. Plus the MySpace overall mission is now off-kilter. When was the last time you thought of your favorite music store as “a place for friends.”
 

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Wal-Mart Dabbles in Healthcare

February 7, 2008 in Marketing | 0 Comments

Okay, well maybe dabble isn’t a good word, but Wal-Mart has been allowing medical clinics on premise to dispense minor healthcare for a while.  And now it is ramping up this business practice with plans to have 400 store clinics up and running by 2010.
 
This is a very interesting notion, but one that makes me a little uncomfortable and I suspect will make shoppers as well.  If someone is shot in the parking lot, where will they go? To the clinic. Want less drama? How about a parade of sniffling, sneezing, cold-soar be-spotted people wait in on line to get into the clinic. Or shopping in the store while they await their number to be called. “Attention, sick Wal-Mart shoppers?” How about insurance-less people who just need a little aspirin and warmth in the middle of winter?
 
Then of course, there is always the litigation associated with dispensing healthcare. Wal-Mart doesn’t need this type of headache. Retail medicine’s time may have come thanks to the overcrowding of hospital emergency departments, but selling lawnmowers, tires and clothing under the same roof as in-patient care is a little scary.
 
Hillary? Help please.
 

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