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.
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