Word: marts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Mart shoppers like its stores but don't necessarily love them. Low-income shoppers, one of its three core groups, absolutely need the low prices. The two others aren't buying enough: an aspirational middle-income group that likes the brand names, and a third group of regulars that has plenty of spending power but tends to cherry-pick the store without really shopping...
...search for that shop-till-you drop formula, Wal-Mart is testing one prototype in the middle of Middle America--Elyria, Ohio. Castro-Wright strides into a very un-Wal-Mart-like area that features low, wood-veneer (actually recycled plastic) side counters where towels are displayed. You can actually see over the department, and the sight makes you want to linger; you're not hemmed in by the usual 8-ft.-high (2.5 m) discount-store shelving crammed with merchandise. The assortment--the colors and styles--is broad and deep, even attractive. The prices are killer, natch...
...kitchen section, low, faux-granite counters display small appliances in a similar open style. With this design, Wal-Mart has adapted a strategy created by its highly successful Mexican operation, Wal-Mex (which Castro-Wright used to run), that groups domestic wares by room. Wal-Mart recently told analysts that "comp" sales in the newly designed section are doing 3.33 percentage points better than in the old-model sections...
...store in Secaucus, N.J., 470 miles (750 km) east of Elyria, CEO Scott is looking sternly at a serving platter priced at $24.99 as if it didn't get the memo. Around the pricey platter, lower-cost merchandise has sold briskly, and Scott is seeing evidence that Wal-Mart's attempt to move up the fashion/design/price ladder still has a way to go. It's not clear whether shoppers simply won't buy higher-priced stuff at Wal-Mart or, as happened in apparel, it's the wrong stuff on the shelves. "It just doesn't work," he is muttering...
...smarter, Wal-Mart's U.S. organization is experiencing a gravitational shift. Wal-Mart has always been run from Bentonville, the defiantly hick-town global home office in Benton County, Ark. Each Tuesday, for decades, an armada of planes would fling regional bosses to the far parts of the empire. They would return Friday and report Saturday morning at the big weekly meeting that has been held since Mr. Sam was in charge. Numbers would be counted; plans would be made; orders would be cut. In the field, store managers wouldn't change their socks unless the home office gave...