WHY CAN’T WAL-MART GO NATIVE…?
Sam Walton was a brilliant Southerner. Unfortunately, we focus too much on the brilliant part and forget his Southern roots. That explains why as Wal-Mart has moved out of its incubator problems have risen. Like these in Japan:
Partly as a result, the fired employees and current ones as well have created a climate of resistance. They are frequently quoted in Japanese media complaining about Wal-Mart’s efforts to instill an American operating model in Japan. The company says it is being flexible, but the carping persists: Wal-Mart is moving too aggressively to cut out distribution middlemen; it is making life difficult for managers by mandating that stores remain open for 24 hours; it is introducing products from China and elsewhere that don’t meet Japanese tastes or standards of quality.
“Seiyu became a completely different store after it came under Wal-Mart management,” the magazine Nikkei Business quoted one store manager as saying. “National-brand food product prices have definitely come down, but high-quality merchandise has disappeared from the shelves, and customers have left.”
The heart of the problem, the naysayers argue, is that Wal-Mart’s model of “always low prices” may work in developing, under-retailed markets such as China and Mexico, but it doesn’t work in a country like Japan, where consumers are willing to pay top prices for exclusive goods of the highest quality.
In a world of infinite diverstiy, cookie cutters get bent.