According to a story from Media Post Marketing Daily this week, both store traffic and dollars spent per transaction at Wal-Mart declined in the third quarter. Click here to see the story.
Implications: While the commentator in this story (Adam Hanft) puts it a bit harshly, he makes a good point. And that is, Wal-Mart enjoyed a windfall of new customers with the onset of the recession, but whether they can hold on to those customers as we move through recovery remains to be seen.
This might just speak to one of the principles we focus on often, in Elm Street Economics workshops: Know your target consumer, know what benefits are sought by that consumer… and realize that both the Target and the Benefits are subject to change at any given moment.
Did you lose customers to competitors with the onset of the recession that might be ready (or may have already started) to return to your business? How can you make that happen faster? Did you gain customers in response to the recession? How can you prevent them from going back to their old ways, if those ways did not include you?
Mike Anderson
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