Wal-Mart Speaks, But What is the Message?

Circulation Management, June 1, 2004

Byline: KRISTINA JOUKHADAR

Everyone is looking to Wal-Mart for something. Publishers want to sell more magazines there; other retailers want to copy it; its technical scanning requirements are the talk of the industry. It is, after all, the world's biggest retailer, the largest employer in the US and they sell a lot of magazines.

So when Gordon Erickson, general merchandise manager of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. gave his speech at the Magazine Retail Conference, everybody listened.

But while Erickson had the perfect opportunity to address publishing industry concerns, he didn't say much of interest to magazine publishers. (Go figure!)

"What people read about us and who we are are two different things," said Erickson. "We are not a monster company taking over the world"

Then what is it? Erickson's answer: "We focus energy on our own people and the rest on our customers."

With 120 million people coming into the stores every week, the chain's primary question to itself is: "What can we do today to make it better for our customers?" Erickson added that to hear Wal-Mart management talk, one would think the company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

"They are always talking about how they aren't very good and the competition is better; how they have to work harder," he said. "The leaders talk to customers, the department managers talk to customers every day, who email them about all the stuff we're doing wrong and what we should do."

Erickson went on to describe the archetypal Wal-Mart customer. She is Mrs. Smith from Miosha, MO. She has three children to support on $30,000 per year. She's a volunteer at church, supports the PTA, and doesn't know what she would do without Wal-Mart.

"How she shops is absolutely brilliant," Erickson said. "She always takes care of the family first and the children first. Everything in the basket is family related."

And when you look at the base of the fixture at the end of the checkout [the magazine rack] you can see just how great a person Mrs. Smith is.

"If she says,'we can't afford this,' she puts it back on the base of the rack," Erickson said. "For every dollar she saves on milk, cheese and basics, she might buy one thing that she wants for herself."

His conclusion:

"If you find a loaf of bread or a container of milk on the [magazine] rack, we know that we've failed our customers!"

Erickson continued: "At Wal-Mart, we give our customers the best prices - we sell for less. They trust their regular items to be in stock. How can you be mean to an 80-year-old grandma? Hope you had a good experience. Thank you for shopping Wal-Mart. She looks you in the eye and you say 'thanks for shopping here today.' The culture is the people, not the company."

Erickson then told a touching customer service story a manager experienced first-hand. It involved a customer who had purchased $140 worth of giant blow-up toys to display in her yard for Halloween. Somehow they got damaged, and she wanted them replaced before her children got upset.

She called her Wal-Mart store, which was out of stock on the items. But lo and behold, two devoted customer service reps called around to all the stores and found the woman not one, but two sets of replacement blow-up toys. So all was right with her world, her children were happy and the service reps were honored at the next company meeting.

Apparently this customer did not put her bread and milk back on the magazine rack that day.