Welcome to the 89th 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.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) recently unveiled its "Operation Main Street" geared to help families have a decent Christmas without breaking the bank. While one look at the national U.S. economy can tell anyone that most Americans are not having issues tightening their financial belts, it's always good to see retailers helping out.
That is, if this is really what Operation Main Street is. Not wanting to falter on its quarterly numbers, the world's largest retailer has claimed it has saved American families $300 million so far this holiday shopping season, and intends to add another $100 million to that total through the holiday season that ends arguably two weeks from today, more or less.
Operation Main Street
Wal-Mart has the gall and wherewithal to initiate any marketing campaign and call it whatever it wants, and at any time. With the entire U.S. population watching their pennies (except the golden parachute CEOs), Americans are not exactly spending their collective life savings this holiday season. Wal-Mart has been the standout retailer, however. It continues raking in sales and taking market share from the competition based on its tried-and-true marketing mantra: Save Money. Live Better. This is a more modern take on the previous Everyday Low Prices.
Wal-Mart's announced price rollbacks just advertised starting yesterday gives the retailer a little less than two weeks before Christmas to save its customer base as much money as possible. Wal-Mart has laser-focused its price reductions over that time period to savings on items for preparing for the holidays (grocery and other related categories) as well as, of course, hot gift items.
A few notables: the retailer has a Toshiba laptop PC for $398 (its lowest price all year) and a 32-inch Sharp flat-screen HDTV for the same price. Those are barn-burner prices in many ways, and mimic the kinds of discounts the retailer had on display on Black Friday some weeks ago. In fact, Wal-Mart shoppers who have used #WMT on their cellphones to receive Wal-Mart "Savings Alerts" have already heard of these savings along with a bunch of others. Those signed up for this mobile notification service should expect to see plenty of alerts this week and into early next week as Christmas shopping for millions wraps up completely.
Connecting brick-and-mortar to the internet
One of the fascinating areas I've studied over the years has been the myriad of ways different retailers connect their online shopping experiences and customer services to those same experiences in stores. In many ways, retailers present a unified shopping storefront, but have an amount of disconnection between buying something in a store and buying it online -- then requiring service after the fact which exposes the disconnection just referenced. Major retailers have figured out how to bypass this disconnection and they present a very cohesive experience to the customer.
Wal-Mart's efforts in this area have been very good. The retailer has indicated that it will be saving customers $40 million just in shipping fees this holiday season. The method for doing this involves the retailer giving free shipping to all orders ordered from www.walmart.com and shipped to a local Wal-Mart location for customer pick up. The retailer has extended this special offer through December 17th. While this is not exactly ground-breaking territory -- many retailers are providing free shipping for online orders -- the "saves $40 million for consumers" bit is a nice way to market this kind of tactic.
The one thing that is pretty weak here is Wal-Mart's in-store marketing of this free shipping availability. A trip this weekend proved fruitless on looking for any indication inside of a Wal-Mart Supercenter location that actually promoted customers to shop online and then pickup merchandise at a local store. There's a bit of the advertising disconnection -- both entities (stores and web) need to cross-promote and create a singular shopping experience for the customer. So far, Wal-Mart's efforts measure up on a unified storefront, but not a totally unified experience regardless of shopping perference for consumers.
Where are you doing most of your shopping this year?
With Wal-Mart's Operation Main Street (most likely a cheap snipe at the recent U.S. Presidential campaign buzzword) still in full effect, the retailer is set to have a good, but not great holiday retail sales season. Its November same-store sales were up over the same period in 2007 and there's no reason to think Wal-Mart won't eclipse 2008 December figures as well, even in a completely changed world that exists now. Gas prices have gotten way better. Everything else? Way, way worse.
How much are you spending on shopping this year? What percentage is Wal-Mart getting from that figure? Drop a line in comments below and tell the audience what you're experiences have been this holiday shopping season, bad and good. Perhaps this time next year, there will be many more good things than bad things to report.
Stay tuned this time next week here at BloggingStocks for another edition of the Wal-Mart Weekly. Until then, take care and shop safe out there.
Wal-Mart has the gall and wherewithal to initiate any marketing campaign and call it whatever it wants, and at any time. With the entire U.S. population watching their pennies (except the golden parachute CEOs), Americans are not exactly spending their collective life savings this holiday season. Wal-Mart has been the standout retailer, however. It continues raking in sales and taking market share from the competition based on its tried-and-true marketing mantra: Save Money. Live Better. This is a more modern take on the previous Everyday Low Prices.
Wal-Mart's announced price rollbacks just advertised starting yesterday gives the retailer a little less than two weeks before Christmas to save its customer base as much money as possible. Wal-Mart has laser-focused its price reductions over that time period to savings on items for preparing for the holidays (grocery and other related categories) as well as, of course, hot gift items.
A few notables: the retailer has a Toshiba laptop PC for $398 (its lowest price all year) and a 32-inch Sharp flat-screen HDTV for the same price. Those are barn-burner prices in many ways, and mimic the kinds of discounts the retailer had on display on Black Friday some weeks ago. In fact, Wal-Mart shoppers who have used #WMT on their cellphones to receive Wal-Mart "Savings Alerts" have already heard of these savings along with a bunch of others. Those signed up for this mobile notification service should expect to see plenty of alerts this week and into early next week as Christmas shopping for millions wraps up completely.
Connecting brick-and-mortar to the internet
One of the fascinating areas I've studied over the years has been the myriad of ways different retailers connect their online shopping experiences and customer services to those same experiences in stores. In many ways, retailers present a unified shopping storefront, but have an amount of disconnection between buying something in a store and buying it online -- then requiring service after the fact which exposes the disconnection just referenced. Major retailers have figured out how to bypass this disconnection and they present a very cohesive experience to the customer.
Wal-Mart's efforts in this area have been very good. The retailer has indicated that it will be saving customers $40 million just in shipping fees this holiday season. The method for doing this involves the retailer giving free shipping to all orders ordered from www.walmart.com and shipped to a local Wal-Mart location for customer pick up. The retailer has extended this special offer through December 17th. While this is not exactly ground-breaking territory -- many retailers are providing free shipping for online orders -- the "saves $40 million for consumers" bit is a nice way to market this kind of tactic.
The one thing that is pretty weak here is Wal-Mart's in-store marketing of this free shipping availability. A trip this weekend proved fruitless on looking for any indication inside of a Wal-Mart Supercenter location that actually promoted customers to shop online and then pickup merchandise at a local store. There's a bit of the advertising disconnection -- both entities (stores and web) need to cross-promote and create a singular shopping experience for the customer. So far, Wal-Mart's efforts measure up on a unified storefront, but not a totally unified experience regardless of shopping perference for consumers.
Where are you doing most of your shopping this year?
With Wal-Mart's Operation Main Street (most likely a cheap snipe at the recent U.S. Presidential campaign buzzword) still in full effect, the retailer is set to have a good, but not great holiday retail sales season. Its November same-store sales were up over the same period in 2007 and there's no reason to think Wal-Mart won't eclipse 2008 December figures as well, even in a completely changed world that exists now. Gas prices have gotten way better. Everything else? Way, way worse.
How much are you spending on shopping this year? What percentage is Wal-Mart getting from that figure? Drop a line in comments below and tell the audience what you're experiences have been this holiday shopping season, bad and good. Perhaps this time next year, there will be many more good things than bad things to report.
Stay tuned this time next week here at BloggingStocks for another edition of the Wal-Mart Weekly. Until then, take care and shop safe out there.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-16-2008 @ 2:08PM
NickP said...
We are spending as much as LY and none of it in walmart. Free shipping? Big Whoop. Many, like Ace, have done this for over a year and year'round. Saved us $300 mil.? What lie is that based on? Now that they are desperately running ads in the newspaper every week it is easy to see they are rarely the low price in the ads. And WHY would they be cutting prices IF they are ALREADY the low price? They just like to needlessly piss away stockholder equity? Reality is they have jacked far more prices than they have cut and therefore will again post record profits. One wonders when the FTC will EVER get their act together and force walmart to stop lying like they did years ago (after the damage was done).
12-19-2008 @ 4:54PM
roudy said...
I can't make sense of NickP's comment. I have owned Wal-Mart stock since 1981 and am very happy with it as my core holding. My average cost is less than $20 per share.Am I wrong to appreciate Wal-Mart? I don't think so.IN closing "let fools be fools as long as they are happy" may apply to some negative people.Roudy
12-30-2008 @ 1:38AM
kumlotto said...
the reason for no in store signage about "operation main st" is SIMPLE...they want you IN STORE. that's the bottom line for in store pick up. the intent is surely not to 'help out' those of us on main st. they want us in store so we will shop more, impulse buy, spend more $$$.