Meat + Poultry - August 2007 - 86

WAL-MART

McKinsey Quarterly. "We need to evolve it
to being a broader value proposition."
Dubbing the principal group of
coveted customers "selective shoppers," who come into Wal-Mart frequently but shop in a narrower range
of categories than core customers,

Fleming described this group as "time
starved."
"They want solutions, not just items,"
he said in the McKinsey interview. "For
example, something like 85 percent of
selective shoppers don't even know
what they're having for dinner an hour

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August 2007

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before they have dinner. And you know
what? We have a lot of people in our
stores at that time, so we need to be
able to present meal solutions. That' s
a big change for us because we've built
our business selling items.
It's about value more than just
price."
Fleming said the company's supercenter concept can be presented in a
manner that appeals to customers with
significantly higher income than the
core Wal-Mart customer.
"That doesn't seem to be a barrier,"
he said.
This great potential and the fact grocery stands out as one of the fastest
growing areas of Wal-Mart's business
does not exempt the company from
skepticism about how well it will execute these changes, said Charles Holley, executive vice president.
"I've had a lot of questions from analysts over the last few months about our
grocery business and how well it's really
doing with some cynicism," Holley said
at a Lehman Brother Retail Seminar in
May. "We haven't done a good job of
getting that across - that this is a very
strong part of our business - grocery,
continues to be. I believe our comps
in dry grocery 'out comp' the industry.
"I think the real focus this year though
is going to be the fresh area. You're going to see things, obviously with organics,
you'll see a lot more specialized product
innovation like with the artisan breads
that we're rolling out. They've proved
very successful. You'll see more kinds
of breads in that line. Our take-and-bake
has gone into pizzas, chicken pot pies
and lasagnas. Those have proven very,
very good. You will see more of that
product innovation throughout the year
in this fresh area."
Holley insisted the strength in the
new food product areas does not excuse
Wal-Mart from its role as a low price
leader, noting price rollbacks have been
instrumental in drawing customers back
to the stores in recent months.
"We will continue to be the price
leader," he said. "It's really our entry
into the game. Our customers depend

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Meat + Poultry - August 2007

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