May 1, 2009
Houston, We Have a Problem (with Wal-Mart)
By David Morse, President and CEO, New American Dimensions, LLC
“I’m looking for a … Caucasian Superstore to cater to whites.”
“What a way to assimilate – isolate yourselves into ethnic enclaves, trade at Hispanic-only stores, continue to speak Spanish. Then blame racists when you can’t get a good job or move up the ladder of success in America.”
“Wake up and have kids America, or else this will be Latin America.”
This is a sampling of some of the comments posted to the Houston Chronicle’s website in response to an article by Jenalia Moreno about the opening of Houston’s Supermercado de Walmart, a Hispanic themed superstore opened on Wednesday by the retailing giant.
According to the article, Wal-Mart Stores converted one of its 39,000 square-foot units and “ditched the ethnic aisle, shrank the frozen foods section and stocked few brands of peanut butter, a food not popular with Latino immigrants. At the same time, it enlarged the trés leches-stocked bakery, added a kitchen that serves tacos and put up signs in Spanish and English.”
According to José Antonio Fernandez, Wal-Mart vice president of business development, the company has learned how to serve Latinos from its experience in Latin America, where the retailer runs 2,346 stores, half in Mexico. “I think this is a natural evolution of what we’ve been doing for years,” he told the Chronicle. And let’s not forget that Wal-Mart has learned a ton from serving Hispanics here in the United States.
In other words, Wal-Mart is following the lessons taught in any marketing school anywhere that is worth its salt. Listen to your consumers. Stock what they buy. Merchandise the way they shop. And speak the language they speak. And lesson number one: be in tune with their demographics.
There are currently about 49 million Hispanics in the United States with nearly a billion dollars in purchasing power. They make up 16 percent of the U.S. population. By 2050 they are projected to make up 30 percent, eight years after Whites are expected to fall below less than half the population. Our country is witnessing a demographic revolution that is largely driven by Hispanics.
Wal-Mart is in touch with where America is going. Or are they? By catering to a booming Hispanic population does Wal-Mart stand to alienate its core consumer? A consumer that is Middle American, more suburban than urban, English speaking, and well, white.
Clearly, the Houston Chronicle readers do not consider themselves racist. They would tell you that Hispanics should assimilate like other immigrants before them (our research says that they are). They would tell you that as Americans, Hispanics should speak English (our research says they do – at least those who have lived most of their lives in the United States). They would probably say that no race should be extended special treatment (even though Hispanics do not comprise a race; they just happen to be our country’s largest and most recent immigrant group).
Is Wal-Mart wrong to be building Hispanic format stores? They wouldn’t be the first in Houston. Three years ago, H-E-B opened a 48,000 square-foot Mi Tienda store there; Kroger transformed a 59,000 square-foot store to a Hispanic format a few years before that.
Discussion Question: In times of such transformative demographic change, should retailers be more sensitive to those non-Hispanics who may not represent the majority but are certainly the most vocal? How should Wal-Mart respond to those who have criticized it for opening a Hispanic-focused store?
[Editor’s Note] Wal-Mart Stores was contacted by RetailWire and asked to comment for this story. As of press time, there was no comment from the company.
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Odds are the most vocal don’t shop at Wal-Mart anyway. When you travel internationally or have a short-term stay in another country because of your job, aren’t you attracted to venues or retailers that speak English? We are a global society, a melting pot. Learning and appreciating other cultures will release the resistance and attitude of “you in my country you speak my language, Tonto!”
A business is meeting the needs of customers…they are maximizing the use of existing assets (the property/plant)…and have created a differentiator from competition to drive the target shopper to them…where is the problem? If someone does not want to shop there, they are free to not spend their money there. Why the vitriol?
If a business chooses to provide a shopping environment, products, signage, or anything else to cater to a customer–seems like it is smart business to me. The racist angle gets headlines, but is ignorance run amok…similar to the nonsense about people being offended because a clerk says, “have a nice day” (as if there is now pressure to do so, or it is a demand/command).
Is this really a big deal or are a small group of people making a big deal out of nothing? Walmart is an easy target for those who discriminate against others. Frustration in the country is running high and any excuse to vent is welcomed. I’m no fan of Walmart, but they are simply responding to market conditions and demographics.
It’s all about the dollars and if the bean counters say they can make profit and grab market share by opening a Hispanic-themed store, then they will open Hispanic-themed stores. As for criticism, yes, perhaps it oversteps some boundaries with culture and business but at this point in time we cannot pull any stops. I’ve always said it’s important to cater to your local community and I completely agree with what Walmart has done. I wonder if there would be a problem if it was a private business as opposed to Walmart.
One of the most interesting insights into challenges around immigration that I have learned, is that the demand to learn English far outstrips our country’s capacity to deliver. Especially in border states with Mexico, apparently the waiting list for English language classes is 2-3 YEARS.
Why do I bring this up? Because there is a huge opportunity for retail. Retail can be a bridge between cultures, and I think Walmart is doing a much better job here than they had in the past. It’s not like they converted the whole store to Spanish-only. It’s not like they converted a store in rural Iowa to this format. Do people protest the Korean grocer? The Indian market?
But there is another area in this equation that gets ignored: the employee. What kind of perk would it be if the retailer offered English language courses? Not only does it help you serve your customers better, by increasing the fluency of English-as-second-language employees, it helps your employees with important skills.
Before the economy stole everyone’s attention, immigration was shaping up to be a very contentious issue in this country. That hasn’t gone away, it’s just simmering below the surface. But I’ll place my bets with the culturally savvy options any day, and kudos to Walmart for learning from some hard lessons on how to make that happen.
In a world full of personal agendas and prejudices, a great many people think they are thinking when they are just rearranging their prejudices. It’s true that natives expect you to speak the native language and that can cause discomfort for “outsiders.” For instance, go to Paris without a local friend to steer you through their language and culture and your comfortable zone can be challenged.
People seek comfort in places other than their homes. So if you only speak one language or if you are still weaned on certain foods, mores and customs, you go where you feel you belong. Putting all political, nationalistic and cultural issues aside, Hispanics prefer to shop where they feel comfortable. That’s what H-E-B, Kroger and Wal-mart are trying to provide for them. Si.
Que pasa with the ignorant white people who have a problem with this? What are they afraid of? Thank heaven they’re just a vocal minority. Wal-Mart’s move is simply common sense, which, as we know, is not so common after all.
Been in Miami lately? Little Havana has had stores with purely Spanish names for more than two decades. All of our stores have signage in English and Spanish. Plus, whether I/we like it or not, ethnic enclaves have existed in this country since its beginning. So why not?
Will it be a big help for Walmart to “go all the way”? Eh…I don’t think so. But it won’t hurt either.
We need to separate the desire for Walmart to maximize profits by catering to an existing consumer need with society’s need to help immigrants grow and succeed in America. Walmart has been an amazing role model for the retail industry but have they demonstrated that same role model behavior for their employees and consumers outside of those group’s dominant role in moving the Walmart juggernaut?
The evidence is clear that learning the dominant culture’s language and custom will afford Latinos a greater mobility and wealth within US society. But is this Walmart’s role? I think we expect Walmart to be more of a role model in everyday society because of their size than they intend to do so.
This was an underperforming store that they’ve converted. So maybe some of these newspaper contributors should have been shopping at the store more frequently–Walmart would not have made this change if the store was successful.
I live in Toronto and unfortunately don’t have access to a “Hispanic store,” but I have been to some of the Hispanic stores in Phoenix and they’re a wonderful shopping experience. The produce is incredibly fresh.
We have a large Asian supermarket in Toronto that I frequent and it offers much better fresh products than your regular supermarket. Most days it’s incredibly busy and the crowd is usually half Asian, half non-Asian.
I do think that if people in Toronto made comments like this in a Toronto newspaper (about the Asian store), they would be criticized for being racist. I guess that’s what makes me proud to be Canadian–even though I was born and raised in Europe.
People who comment on newspaper websites are generally not representative of the majority of the city’s population. I know this is true of the people who frequently comment on my city’s newspaper website, and I can’t imagine Houstonians would be much different. Their opinions carry little weight–they’re just looking to get a rise out of others. And as this discussion demonstrates, they have.
A Mr. McNamara blogged the Houston Chronicle: “Since I am Irish-American, I want a Paddy-O’Toole’s warehouse. Filled with beer and potatoes.” I have news for Mr. McNamara. Supermercado de Walmart will sell more beer and potatoes than Mr. McNamara’s fantasy.
Who of us, if we were running Wal-Mart, would not see the Supermercado as an opportunity? Isn’t what Wal-Mart is doing exactly what stockholders should expect from their companies? Isn’t what Wal-Mart is doing exactly how we teach our business students to approach business? The reality is, Wal-Mart has pretty much saturated white middle America. Where are Wal-Mart’s opportunities within the U.S.? I think they have found one. I teach Business Strategy at the Master’s level. If one of my students came up with this strategy for Wal-Mart, they get an A.
Am I concerned about the assimilation of Hispanics? Here is my experience. My grandparents came from Italy. My grandfather’s cousin had a small grocery store in the neighborhood on the lower east side of New York. The majority of products were Italian, all the signage was in Italian and the language of the store was Italian. My grandmother shopped there. But, it didn’t stop my grandparents from learning English. It didn’t stop them from sending their children (who didn’t speak Italian) to college. And, it didn’t stop my family from becoming fully assimilated.
As a proud and active resident of Houston Texas I can speak for myself and almost every single other person I know when I say “Who cares?” We are constantly surrounded by a blend of Central and South American food, culture, and illegal (undocumented) laborers gathering outside of Home Depots and gas stations. The gauntlet isn’t going to be laid down by the “ignorant white people who have a problem with this” any more than a few comments on chron.com.
Not many Houstonians are going to bat an eye at Wal-Mart opening a store that caters directly to the Latin element. Fiesta has been doing it since 1972 and operates 49 massive stores in Texas, 29 of which are in Houston. It’s where we go to get fresh corn tortillas and Tamarind flavored anything. Fiesta is a Latin Everything Store to be reckoned with.
So maybe the question should be “What makes Wal-Mart so sure it can compete with the already saturated market of Latin-Centric purveyors in Houston?” I’m sure the answer is the same way they dominate every market…huge buying power, efficiency of scale, and low low prices.
Any analysis that makes this a cultural commentary instead of a prudent business move is picking low hanging fruit off the racial sensationalism tree. Not a race? I wouldn’t exclaim that at a Houston Dynamo game. Viva La Raza.
I happen to live in Houston and if the store was not owned or operated by Wal-Mart this article would not even have made the inside back page of a local free throw.
Almost 30 years ago a very smart grocer opened a chain of grocery stores called Fiesta, I bet you can tell by the name who their target market was and still is. When they opened with great produce, great fish, and product you could not find anywhere else in Houston, they made a major impact on the marketplace. As a shopper, I will say it was all positive. More choice and some new creative marketing ideas.
It still amazes me as I look back, and how every major grocer is now displaying produce in a more open market-like setting. As far as I know, they were the first to do that, at least in this part of the country.
Just as Walmart is free to pursue its economic best interests in whatever (legal) way it wants, persons who don’t like a particular marketing moving should be free to express that discontent without being vilified. In this case, someone should have pointed out to the critics that more Supermercados de Walmart might mean fewer Hispanic shoppers in the stores the critics shop.
One question that does arise is whether non-Spanish-speaking associates will be hired for the Supermercado since I know there are some non-English speaking associates in other Walmart stores.
Any retailer who wants to operate stores within any given local trade area, across any state, or across the country can do one of two things to be successful. They can either develop a prototype store and only open stores in markets where the demographics fit the store, or they can recognize the demographic variations that exist among trade areas and adapt the stores to fit those demographics.
It is not just Hispanics that are an issue. Asians, African Americans and Muslim populations pose the same challenges. And there are many other examples.
Walmart and others who recognize this as an opportunity will experience the best market penetration.
I’m confused. Most Hispanic people I know are White people. What the heck is a white person? Wal-Mart is just serving a demographic they feel will penetrate and get the most market share. There are plenty of conventional stores for non-Hispanic Americans in Houston. H-E-B has done a great job in Houston, as well as all of Texas, of being able to cater to both cultures.
Here in Chicago, I can (and sometimes do) shop in stores catering to Chinese, Filipinos, Indians, Poles, Czechs, Thais and others. The same is true in most other large cities.
The only difference between these stores and Supermercado is the ownership.
What will Walmart’s existing customers think? I guess the answer is clearly not black or white (or beige, red, yellow or brown for that matter).
Wal-Mart is segmenting and localizing its offer as a smart information-rich retailer should.
Some customers who hold a tightly parochial view may feel alienated when they read about this development, but most probably won’t bother as long as their local Walmart continues to deliver what they want at prices they like.
Vibrant societies and economies are true melting pots; rather than exclude, filter and conform, they imbibe and blend. The fact is that real assimilation causes both to change – the ones coming in and the society/geography taking them in–and we have to accept that change often brings some pain with it, as expressed by the reader commenting on Houston Chronicle’s website.
The first waves of European settlers created a change when they started landing in North America 500-odd years ago, and so has every wave of immigrants since–Chinese, Japanese, German, Irish, Italian, Eastern European, Korean, Indian, Caribbean and so on. The first settlers will always be suspicious and exclusive in their approach towards the second set, the second lot of the next and so on.
The wave of economic homogenization driven by the post-war baby boom and infrastructure expansion was possibly one of the largest in recent history (other than the Soviet Union and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which were more political than economic). However, we’ve seen the US market grow in diversity in the last 2-3 decades–not only because of differences due to race or country of origin, but also due to geographic, economic and otherwise cultural differences.
Today many of the diverse segments today in the US are large enough to express their unique needs, and expect them to be fulfilled. While the cookie-cutter approach served well during the years of national expansion across homogenized markets, that approach is counter-productive today. A retailer like Walmart can’t be expected to ignore that fact.
The bigger question is how will the customers will pay for their purchases now that Bank of America has cut their limits in half and they can’t pay their mortgages? Gerald Storch said it best, “The Evil Empire.” I wonder how many schools are overcrowded and emergency rooms have shut down in that area?
It’s not easy being intolerant. You can’t go to Disneyland (they have gay and lesbian events), you can’t shop at Walmart (they cater to Hispanics), you can’t send your kids to public school (blacks and whites are in the same classes), and you can’t be assured your neighbors will always be just like you as long as you own your house. Even South Africa got integrated. Where can the downtrodden racists go? Here’s an underserved market!
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Odds are the most vocal don’t shop at Wal-Mart anyway. When you travel internationally or have a short-term stay in another country because of your job, aren’t you attracted to venues or retailers that speak English? We are a global society, a melting pot. Learning and appreciating other cultures will release the resistance and attitude of “you in my country you speak my language, Tonto!”
A business is meeting the needs of customers…they are maximizing the use of existing assets (the property/plant)…and have created a differentiator from competition to drive the target shopper to them…where is the problem? If someone does not want to shop there, they are free to not spend their money there. Why the vitriol?
If a business chooses to provide a shopping environment, products, signage, or anything else to cater to a customer–seems like it is smart business to me. The racist angle gets headlines, but is ignorance run amok…similar to the nonsense about people being offended because a clerk says, “have a nice day” (as if there is now pressure to do so, or it is a demand/command).
Is this really a big deal or are a small group of people making a big deal out of nothing? Walmart is an easy target for those who discriminate against others. Frustration in the country is running high and any excuse to vent is welcomed. I’m no fan of Walmart, but they are simply responding to market conditions and demographics.
It’s all about the dollars and if the bean counters say they can make profit and grab market share by opening a Hispanic-themed store, then they will open Hispanic-themed stores. As for criticism, yes, perhaps it oversteps some boundaries with culture and business but at this point in time we cannot pull any stops. I’ve always said it’s important to cater to your local community and I completely agree with what Walmart has done. I wonder if there would be a problem if it was a private business as opposed to Walmart.
One of the most interesting insights into challenges around immigration that I have learned, is that the demand to learn English far outstrips our country’s capacity to deliver. Especially in border states with Mexico, apparently the waiting list for English language classes is 2-3 YEARS.
Why do I bring this up? Because there is a huge opportunity for retail. Retail can be a bridge between cultures, and I think Walmart is doing a much better job here than they had in the past. It’s not like they converted the whole store to Spanish-only. It’s not like they converted a store in rural Iowa to this format. Do people protest the Korean grocer? The Indian market?
But there is another area in this equation that gets ignored: the employee. What kind of perk would it be if the retailer offered English language courses? Not only does it help you serve your customers better, by increasing the fluency of English-as-second-language employees, it helps your employees with important skills.
Before the economy stole everyone’s attention, immigration was shaping up to be a very contentious issue in this country. That hasn’t gone away, it’s just simmering below the surface. But I’ll place my bets with the culturally savvy options any day, and kudos to Walmart for learning from some hard lessons on how to make that happen.
In a world full of personal agendas and prejudices, a great many people think they are thinking when they are just rearranging their prejudices. It’s true that natives expect you to speak the native language and that can cause discomfort for “outsiders.” For instance, go to Paris without a local friend to steer you through their language and culture and your comfortable zone can be challenged.
People seek comfort in places other than their homes. So if you only speak one language or if you are still weaned on certain foods, mores and customs, you go where you feel you belong. Putting all political, nationalistic and cultural issues aside, Hispanics prefer to shop where they feel comfortable. That’s what H-E-B, Kroger and Wal-mart are trying to provide for them. Si.
Que pasa with the ignorant white people who have a problem with this? What are they afraid of? Thank heaven they’re just a vocal minority. Wal-Mart’s move is simply common sense, which, as we know, is not so common after all.
Been in Miami lately? Little Havana has had stores with purely Spanish names for more than two decades. All of our stores have signage in English and Spanish. Plus, whether I/we like it or not, ethnic enclaves have existed in this country since its beginning. So why not?
Will it be a big help for Walmart to “go all the way”? Eh…I don’t think so. But it won’t hurt either.
We need to separate the desire for Walmart to maximize profits by catering to an existing consumer need with society’s need to help immigrants grow and succeed in America. Walmart has been an amazing role model for the retail industry but have they demonstrated that same role model behavior for their employees and consumers outside of those group’s dominant role in moving the Walmart juggernaut?
The evidence is clear that learning the dominant culture’s language and custom will afford Latinos a greater mobility and wealth within US society. But is this Walmart’s role? I think we expect Walmart to be more of a role model in everyday society because of their size than they intend to do so.
This was an underperforming store that they’ve converted. So maybe some of these newspaper contributors should have been shopping at the store more frequently–Walmart would not have made this change if the store was successful.
I live in Toronto and unfortunately don’t have access to a “Hispanic store,” but I have been to some of the Hispanic stores in Phoenix and they’re a wonderful shopping experience. The produce is incredibly fresh.
We have a large Asian supermarket in Toronto that I frequent and it offers much better fresh products than your regular supermarket. Most days it’s incredibly busy and the crowd is usually half Asian, half non-Asian.
I do think that if people in Toronto made comments like this in a Toronto newspaper (about the Asian store), they would be criticized for being racist. I guess that’s what makes me proud to be Canadian–even though I was born and raised in Europe.
People who comment on newspaper websites are generally not representative of the majority of the city’s population. I know this is true of the people who frequently comment on my city’s newspaper website, and I can’t imagine Houstonians would be much different. Their opinions carry little weight–they’re just looking to get a rise out of others. And as this discussion demonstrates, they have.
A Mr. McNamara blogged the Houston Chronicle: “Since I am Irish-American, I want a Paddy-O’Toole’s warehouse. Filled with beer and potatoes.” I have news for Mr. McNamara. Supermercado de Walmart will sell more beer and potatoes than Mr. McNamara’s fantasy.
Who of us, if we were running Wal-Mart, would not see the Supermercado as an opportunity? Isn’t what Wal-Mart is doing exactly what stockholders should expect from their companies? Isn’t what Wal-Mart is doing exactly how we teach our business students to approach business? The reality is, Wal-Mart has pretty much saturated white middle America. Where are Wal-Mart’s opportunities within the U.S.? I think they have found one. I teach Business Strategy at the Master’s level. If one of my students came up with this strategy for Wal-Mart, they get an A.
Am I concerned about the assimilation of Hispanics? Here is my experience. My grandparents came from Italy. My grandfather’s cousin had a small grocery store in the neighborhood on the lower east side of New York. The majority of products were Italian, all the signage was in Italian and the language of the store was Italian. My grandmother shopped there. But, it didn’t stop my grandparents from learning English. It didn’t stop them from sending their children (who didn’t speak Italian) to college. And, it didn’t stop my family from becoming fully assimilated.
As a proud and active resident of Houston Texas I can speak for myself and almost every single other person I know when I say “Who cares?” We are constantly surrounded by a blend of Central and South American food, culture, and illegal (undocumented) laborers gathering outside of Home Depots and gas stations. The gauntlet isn’t going to be laid down by the “ignorant white people who have a problem with this” any more than a few comments on chron.com.
Not many Houstonians are going to bat an eye at Wal-Mart opening a store that caters directly to the Latin element. Fiesta has been doing it since 1972 and operates 49 massive stores in Texas, 29 of which are in Houston. It’s where we go to get fresh corn tortillas and Tamarind flavored anything. Fiesta is a Latin Everything Store to be reckoned with.
So maybe the question should be “What makes Wal-Mart so sure it can compete with the already saturated market of Latin-Centric purveyors in Houston?” I’m sure the answer is the same way they dominate every market…huge buying power, efficiency of scale, and low low prices.
Any analysis that makes this a cultural commentary instead of a prudent business move is picking low hanging fruit off the racial sensationalism tree. Not a race? I wouldn’t exclaim that at a Houston Dynamo game. Viva La Raza.
I happen to live in Houston and if the store was not owned or operated by Wal-Mart this article would not even have made the inside back page of a local free throw.
Almost 30 years ago a very smart grocer opened a chain of grocery stores called Fiesta, I bet you can tell by the name who their target market was and still is. When they opened with great produce, great fish, and product you could not find anywhere else in Houston, they made a major impact on the marketplace. As a shopper, I will say it was all positive. More choice and some new creative marketing ideas.
It still amazes me as I look back, and how every major grocer is now displaying produce in a more open market-like setting. As far as I know, they were the first to do that, at least in this part of the country.
Just as Walmart is free to pursue its economic best interests in whatever (legal) way it wants, persons who don’t like a particular marketing moving should be free to express that discontent without being vilified. In this case, someone should have pointed out to the critics that more Supermercados de Walmart might mean fewer Hispanic shoppers in the stores the critics shop.
One question that does arise is whether non-Spanish-speaking associates will be hired for the Supermercado since I know there are some non-English speaking associates in other Walmart stores.
Any retailer who wants to operate stores within any given local trade area, across any state, or across the country can do one of two things to be successful. They can either develop a prototype store and only open stores in markets where the demographics fit the store, or they can recognize the demographic variations that exist among trade areas and adapt the stores to fit those demographics.
It is not just Hispanics that are an issue. Asians, African Americans and Muslim populations pose the same challenges. And there are many other examples.
Walmart and others who recognize this as an opportunity will experience the best market penetration.
I’m confused. Most Hispanic people I know are White people. What the heck is a white person? Wal-Mart is just serving a demographic they feel will penetrate and get the most market share. There are plenty of conventional stores for non-Hispanic Americans in Houston. H-E-B has done a great job in Houston, as well as all of Texas, of being able to cater to both cultures.
Here in Chicago, I can (and sometimes do) shop in stores catering to Chinese, Filipinos, Indians, Poles, Czechs, Thais and others. The same is true in most other large cities.
The only difference between these stores and Supermercado is the ownership.
What will Walmart’s existing customers think? I guess the answer is clearly not black or white (or beige, red, yellow or brown for that matter).
Wal-Mart is segmenting and localizing its offer as a smart information-rich retailer should.
Some customers who hold a tightly parochial view may feel alienated when they read about this development, but most probably won’t bother as long as their local Walmart continues to deliver what they want at prices they like.
Vibrant societies and economies are true melting pots; rather than exclude, filter and conform, they imbibe and blend. The fact is that real assimilation causes both to change – the ones coming in and the society/geography taking them in–and we have to accept that change often brings some pain with it, as expressed by the reader commenting on Houston Chronicle’s website.
The first waves of European settlers created a change when they started landing in North America 500-odd years ago, and so has every wave of immigrants since–Chinese, Japanese, German, Irish, Italian, Eastern European, Korean, Indian, Caribbean and so on. The first settlers will always be suspicious and exclusive in their approach towards the second set, the second lot of the next and so on.
The wave of economic homogenization driven by the post-war baby boom and infrastructure expansion was possibly one of the largest in recent history (other than the Soviet Union and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which were more political than economic). However, we’ve seen the US market grow in diversity in the last 2-3 decades–not only because of differences due to race or country of origin, but also due to geographic, economic and otherwise cultural differences.
Today many of the diverse segments today in the US are large enough to express their unique needs, and expect them to be fulfilled. While the cookie-cutter approach served well during the years of national expansion across homogenized markets, that approach is counter-productive today. A retailer like Walmart can’t be expected to ignore that fact.
The bigger question is how will the customers will pay for their purchases now that Bank of America has cut their limits in half and they can’t pay their mortgages? Gerald Storch said it best, “The Evil Empire.” I wonder how many schools are overcrowded and emergency rooms have shut down in that area?
It’s not easy being intolerant. You can’t go to Disneyland (they have gay and lesbian events), you can’t shop at Walmart (they cater to Hispanics), you can’t send your kids to public school (blacks and whites are in the same classes), and you can’t be assured your neighbors will always be just like you as long as you own your house. Even South Africa got integrated. Where can the downtrodden racists go? Here’s an underserved market!