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Wal-Mart Adjusts to New Demographics

Hoping to re-energize its customer base and increase profits, discount retailer Wal-Mart is planning on customizing itself to cater to key demographics that it recently identified in its customer base and which have apparently been neglected in the past. While emphasizing that Wal-Mart?s main customer target remains the so-called ?rural? base, Wal-Mart?s Vice Chairman John B. Menzer said in a conference on Tuesday that Wal-Mart is seeing positive results since it began to offer products geared toward blacks, Hispanics, baby-boomers and even high-income customers.

?For example,? said Menzer, ?At Wal-Mart?s Evergreen Park, Illinois store, whose client base is 90 percent African American, we have boosted our sales by offering a selection of ethnic hair-care products, ?urban? apparel styles, and a music selection that`s focused almost exclusively on gospel, rap and other selections catering to a more diversified demographic in a different part of the country.?

Wal-Mart has generally done very well, with stores sometimes open twenty-four hours and prices on everything from movies to health care products that enable lower-income or simply frugal shoppers to pay less for products that just might cost more elsewhere. Wal-Mart has in the recent past considered purchasing companies overseas and extending its low-price philosophy to countries such as Japan. A chief competitor of Wal-Mart is the Target Corporation, whose stores are generally more trendy (and cleaner) in design, since Target has (pun-intended) targeted a higher-income customer than Wal-Mart has aimed for.