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Before getting into groceries, starting in 1986, Wal-Mart figured that a typical store needed a potential customer base of at least 150,000 people. But add groceries, and more of the available shoppers show up; each store needs a smaller area to support it. So Wal-Mart can situate Supercenters less than 5 miles apart in many suburban areas. It is also deploying a cut-down grocery-convenience store called the Neighborhood Market between the superstores. At the same time, Wal-Mart is adding merchandise categories, such as gasoline, Linux computers and flat-screen TVs, in which...
...Although Wal-Mart's stores may look identical, the company is pinning some of its growth prospects on the idea that what goes into them won't be. Wal-Mart's next competitive weapon is advanced data mining, which it will use to forecast, replenish and merchandise on a micro scale. By analyzing years' worth of sales data--and then cranking in variables such as the weather and school schedules--the system could predict the optimal number of cases of Gatorade, in what flavors and sizes, a store in Laredo, Texas, should have on hand the Friday before Labor...
...think of Wal-Mart as a huge pipe organ with thousands of stops that executives constantly pull and push. Early on the day after Thanksgiving 2001, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, the system was reporting slow sales of a boxed computer-and-printer combo for which merchandisers had had high hopes. But one location was bucking the trend. A quick call from headquarters determined that the store manager had cut open one of the stacked cartons so shoppers could see they got both machines for one price. Soon a message went to all other stores: open...
Sell a buck. Save a buck. Repeat. It's that cycle of high-powered logistics engineering and nickel-squeezing huckstering that remains retailing's most potent weapon. UBS's Kristiansen sees no reason why Wal-Mart, which has trounced the Dow over the past five years, will not sustain 15% earnings growth...
...chat with one of the many senior citizens who work as greeters. They are a fearless lot, and the old gent teased the boss with a question: "Did you give everyone a big raise?" Scott returned a look of mock horror. "Are you kidding me?" he said. "This is Wal-Mart!" --With reporting by William Boston/Berlin, Neil Gough/Shenzhen and Rita Healy/Denver