>>What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits
By CONSTANCE L. HAYS
Published: November 14, 2004
URRICANE FRANCES was on its way, barreling across the Caribbean, threatening a direct hit on Florida's Atlantic coast. Residents made for higher ground, but far away, in Bentonville, Ark., executives at Wal-Mart Stores decided that the situation offered a great opportunity for one of their newest data-driven weapons, something that the company calls predictive technology.
A week ahead of the storm's landfall, Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart's chief information officer, pressed her staff to come up with forecasts based on what had happened when Hurricane Charley struck several weeks earlier. Backed by the trillions of bytes' worth of shopper history that is stored in Wal-Mart's computer network, she felt that the company could "start predicting what's going to happen, instead of waiting for it to happen," as she put it.
The experts mined the data and found that the stores would indeed need certain products - and not just the usual flashlights. "We didn't know in the past that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane," Ms. Dillman said in a recent interview. "And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer."
Thanks to those insights, trucks filled with toaster pastries and six-packs were soon speeding down Interstate 95 toward Wal-Marts in the path of Frances. Most of the products that were stocked for the storm sold quickly, the company said.
Such knowledge, Wal-Mart has learned, is not only power. It is profit, too.<<
More at:
nytimes.com
I could have told them beer. The New Orleans pre-hurricane mantra: beer, condoms, rolling paper.
All the kerfluffle about WalMart got me to do a little research, and I discovered a relatively new WalMart only about 4 miles from my house. It's actually a good trade-off from Costco and Home Depot, which have better prices, because it's much closer.
After reading David Brooks talking about "The Purpose Driven Life," I was tuned in to all the "Purpose Driven Life" merchandise. Racks and racks of it. Also racks and racks of Chicken Soup For This 'n That merchandise. Dr. Phil has a big niche, too, and so does Oprah, and the guy who wrote the Da Vinci Code.
Nothing quirky or unique, but if you want mass market, this is the place for it.
Strawberry pop-tarts. Huh. Who'd a thunk it? |
