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The Wal-Mart Weekly: Customer communication is key

Welcome to the 36th 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 down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

Last week, I looked at the China supplier situation with Wal-Mart insofar as how the retailer is even squeezing the cost penny pinchers in China too far. The gist was this: Several major Chinese-based good suppliers seem to believe that they cannot make enough profit due to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) constantly lowering prices.

The retailer lowered price on over 15,000 items to kick off the holiday shopping season just recently, and that probably was the sign on the wall in China. As in, "speak up now or forever hold your peace." When Chinese suppliers start nagging the world's largest retailer to either keep prices steady or, gasp, to actually raise some prices a bit, the writing is on the wall. Wal-Mart's "always low prices" may start to mean "way too low prices" -- well, you get the idea.

This week, I'll be looking at the communication chain Wal-Mart has when it comes to communication highly time-sensitive information to store managers, regions and even consumers. And, I have a great example of this process from just this week. Read on.

Continue reading The Wal-Mart Weekly: Customer communication is key

The Wal-Mart Weekly: Online grocery shopping growth possibilities

Welcome to the 34th 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 down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

As I hinted on earlier today, Wal-Mart's moves to gain further footage into the arena of online grocery shopping are becoming more evident. Although the world's largest retailer dabbles in online grocery shopping inside the non-perishable food category already -- just like online-only competitor Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) -- the difference is that Wal-Mart has over 3,000 physical customer locations in the U.S. alone.

And, therein lies a possible powder-keg opportunity. Could Wal-Mart expand beyond the online grocery delivery business that it currently offers from its Sam's Club division and market this time-saving service to the general customer population for all items located in the grocery sections of its Supercenters? Would this work logistically and become the first nationwide online grocery ordering success story?



Continue reading The Wal-Mart Weekly: Online grocery shopping growth possibilities

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Last updated: February 12, 2012: 12:53 PM

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