Welcome to the 61st installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

After examining two big sets of related shareholder resolutions for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.'s (NYSE: WMT) annual shareholder meeting coming up in June in the past few weeks, we'll depart this week from that path.

I'll be examining one of Wal-Mart's newest websites, what it means and what (on earth) it'll have in terms of an impact on Wal-Mart customers. And, I'll ask one large question: why doesn't the world's largest retailer use its stores as a freely available advertising venue to let its customers know what it has available online? Let's examine, shall we?

Wal-Mart's never-ending mantra: Low Prices

As many of you can probably tell, this week I've switched to using Wal-Mart's newest logo, about a year after the world's largest retailer actually started using it. In 2007, Wal-Mart changed from "Always Low Prices" to "Save Money. Live Better" as its corporate slogan. The change became part of the retailer's logo as well. Wal-Mart said throughout 2006 and into 2007 that it no longer wanted to be perceived as a "low price" stalwart that only catered to those focused on price and nothing else. In other words, lower-income shoppers and families looking to clothe and feed themselves and their families with the lowest amount of money possible.

What Wal-Mart may not have anticipated, though, was that energy prices, gas prices, and some food prices would skyrocket and plunge a whole new contingent of American citizens into the consumer group that would start seeking out lower prices and money-saving deals at all costs. In fact, the retailer mentioned this in its most recent quarterly results.

Although Wal-Mart wanted to cater to higher-income shoppers with newer product lines, enhanced store designs and higher-margin goods, the one saving grace can be its focus on supplying just about any product on its shelves at the absolute lowest price available to ensure it "saves the customer money" and retains that loyalty for when economic times get tough. Well, in case you haven't noticed, economic times have indeed gotten tough in 2008 -- and Wal-Mart is doing something about it on the web.

Helping consumers stretch that dollar like a piece of cheap rubber

Wal-Mart has partnered with Ellie Kay, a family financial expert, to help consumers make wise spending decisions and stretch their dollars at a new website: savemore.walmartstores.com. Wal-Mart wants to ensure it can teach customers how to save as much money as possible by really seeking out bargains as well as using tried-and-true shopping methodologies to cut down on those expenses that are being eaten alive by high gas prices and tightened personal credit standards.



Wal-Mart's new savings website has money-saving tips, video podcasts that demonstrate these tips, chats from Wal-Mart executives on future moves the retailer will make to save you money, and more. One of the biggest pieces of the new website is the capability for consumers to enter and display their own money-saving tips. Opening up the floor to your customer base is always the best idea: give the customer the outlet and let them run the show while you run the platform. This is the basic idea behind blogging in a sense: generate stickiness among the readership and invite them to participate in the dialog as much as possible, like a genuine townhall-type conversation.

But don't think Wal-Mart is doing this as a public service only: it plugs itself all over the website as an enticement to recruit ever more shoppers being plagued by high prices on so many needed daily items -- like gas and milk for starters. The retailer also has an entire section of the website dedicated to informing consumers about all of the money services Wal-Mart offers. Areas like check cashing services, ATM cards, money centers, check cashing, bill payments and money transfers are all broken down and explained in-depth. Hey -- you already shop at Wal-Mart, so why not take advantage of its full-service financial services as well?

The problem with Wal-Mart's marketing of this program

Although Wal-Mart provides an easy way on the website to share it/send it to friends (online viral marketing), it is going to take more than that to reach the mainstream Wal-Mart consumer and let them know the breadth of tips and information available. I am a firm believer that Wal-Mart market its unique value propositions directly in stores. Take some of that signage inventory and really get the daily Wal-Mart shopper knowledgeable about a new money-saving website and the value it could bring to them. Perhaps Wal-Mart has this planned, but I saw no mention of this new website in three different Wal-Mart stores I visited this past week.

Some of the tips offered at the website are basic financial warnings: save money by saving, budget your expenses, beware certain types of debt consolidation and so on. These are truths that have been espoused forever in the consumer finance world, and now Wal-Mart is telling its consumers that there are indeed great maxims to live by. That's great -- but the impact will be small unless you advertise and market the website inside your biggest (and free) advertising vehicle: your own store locations.

Wal-Mart is looking as this as a promotional offshoot of www.walmart.com, but it has to reach further. There must be millions of shoppers who visit Wal-Mart several times per week but who rarely visit Wal-Mart's website. These are the customers Wal-Mart needs to reach with a decent frequency if it really wants to get the concept of "Save Money. Live Better" to the majority of its customers. I'll be watching to see if it in fact does this.

It may be true that Wal-Mart doesn't usually pitch its promotions in stores, while saving that venue for product education and price. That's all well and good, but I fail to see the logic on not pitching for a valuable online resource that could be of real value to the majority of its consumers. Wal-Mart, let me know your thinking if you can, because I'm not sure I understand your thinking on using your stores to get more customers to one of your websites (that is, not a website that will compete with your foot traffic).

Hope you enjoyed this week's Wal-Mart Weekly. Stay tuned right here next week for another edition, and until then, have a great week!