Wal-Mart Pursues Asian Americans (slower sales growth, Asian-language ads)

Los Angeles Times:
Wal-Mart Pursues Asian Americans
Concerned about sales growth, the retailer tries a multilingual advertising campaign.

By Rong-Gong Lin II, Times Staff Writer


Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is betting that a new ad campaign in Asian languages will translate into more sales.

The world's largest retailer Friday began running newspaper, radio and television advertisements in Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego and Houston, hoping to lure more Asian American shoppers to its stores. Print advertisements are also running in Taglish, a combination of Tagalog and English spoken by some Filipinos.

"We know they are a fast-growing consumer group … and we can see that Asian Americans are coming to our stores," spokeswoman Linda Blakley said. "There are signals that are telling us it's time."

The ad campaign comes as Wal-Mart struggles with slower sales growth than recorded in previous years, which executives have blamed partly on rising gasoline prices that have cut into shoppers' spending. In December, Wal-Mart mounted a rare advertising blitz in mainstream newspapers after poor post-Thanksgiving sales.

Asian Americans are coveted consumers, with an estimated buying power of $363 billion a year, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. Such spending will continue to grow, in part because of continued strong immigration and the growing number of Asian-owned businesses, the Selig Center said in a report released last year....


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart2apr02,0,4416255.story?coll=la-home-business

will only be WalMart left. It will become like the old Soviet GUM store where people waited in line to get what they could. There was no choice. And supplies were limited.

they rely on cheap foreign imports and with rising fuel costs, the imports won't be able to maintain their low low prices. It sounds like the increase in fuel costs is already working on keeping the buyers away.

I really hope their strategy fails. If the Asians have so much money to spend, why ever would they want to spend it on cheaply made walmart crap?

why doesn't Hurl-Mart start advertising in Chinese? They can cater to their Chinese customers in the US. In fact, why don't they open Barf-mart stores in China?

There's going to be a BIG market in China. After all, it's the Dreaded Power looming on the horizon. Go for it, Walton's!

and make it all Chinese. Virtually all of the products they sell are made in China. You might as well complete the whole cycle by having all of their "associates" be Chinese.

Let's hope that Asian customers boycott WalMart, just as I hope all others will. We'll all be better off if WalMart is shown the door.

A) They are being boycotted big time for supporting Buh.

B) The economy has been trashed by Buh policy.

It's a little bit off topic but I heard yesterday that Walmart is about to start opening stores in China. I really think this is the stupidest thing they could do. While they may be able to drive mom and pop stores out of business in the U.S. there's no way in hell they can compete with the prices of the thousands of small specialized competitors in Chinese cities. They just don't have suburbs here the way the U.S. does and very few people (who would be caught dead shopping at Walmart) have the cars to drive out to a big mega-chain store. The only way they could make it work would be to go upmarket but even there they face stiff competition from the hundreds of existing department stores. They can't undercut their Chinese competitors who rely on the same cheap labor that they do. Opening stores in China will be a huge loser for Walmart.

That is, go in through the back way by hooking up with (or buying into) local retailers like Seiyu

http://www.nreionline.com/news/real_estate_purchase_minority_stake/