Wal-Mart scores with Latino shoppers on Gulf Coast

With the Gulfport-Biloxi area being hit pretty hard by last year's horrendous hurricane season, the re-building is going on at full speed and a larger settling of Latinos is also taking the area by storm. This is giving retailers such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot an unexpected influx of new shoppers who have cash and are ready to buy.

In addition to corner stores, radio stations and restaurants catering to the Latino population, the Gulf Coast area is experiencing a large increase in a newer, cash-rich population demographic, and, of course, Wal-Mart will be a large beneficiary of this. Some Wal-Mart stores in the area now have Spanish-language sections and more and more small businesses are now owned by Latino owners, creating quite a boom in the local economy after such a disastrous weather-related year in 2005.

This coincides with statements made recently by the head of sales for U.S. Wal-Mart operations, who wants to further customize Wal-Mart stores to the surrounding demographic area to foster more customer growth and ultimately, more sales. As more retailers, including Wal-Mart, figure out that custom stores for custom customers can have a really nice impact on growth, expect to see Wal-Mart further identify and customize stores for certain specific customer segments.