November 13, 2004
YOU CALL THAT A DISASTER?:
What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits (CONSTANCE L. HAYS, 11/14/04, NY Times)
HURRICANE FRANCES was on its way, barreling across the Caribbean, threatening a direct hit on Florida's Atlantic coast. Residents made for higher ground, but far away, in Bentonville, Ark., executives at Wal-Mart Stores decided that the situation offered a great opportunity for one of their newest data-driven weapons, something that the company calls predictive technology.A week ahead of the storm's landfall, Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart's chief information officer, pressed her staff to come up with forecasts based on what had happened when Hurricane Charley struck several weeks earlier. Backed by the trillions of bytes' worth of shopper history that is stored in Wal-Mart's computer network, she felt that the company could "start predicting what's going to happen, instead of waiting for it to happen," as she put it.
The experts mined the data and found that the stores would indeed need certain products - and not just the usual flashlights. "We didn't know in the past that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane," Ms. Dillman said in a recent interview. "And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer."
Thanks to those insights, trucks filled with toaster pastries and six-packs were soon speeding down Interstate 95 toward Wal-Marts in the path of Frances. Most of the products that were stocked for the storm sold quickly, the company said.
There's never a bad time to stock up on beer and Pop-Tarts. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 13, 2004 9:06 PM
Truer words were never spoken, OJ.
Posted by: Brandon at November 13, 2004 11:41 PMI prefer paper targets, myself.
Someone needs to invent "Beer-Tarts" before the next hurricane... they'd clean up!
Posted by: Just John at November 14, 2004 3:05 AMThis is just another example of how truly evil Wal-Mart is. They have the temerity to investigate what people buy and then (horror of horrors!) sell it to them. Even in a hurricane, a perfect time to uplift the dreary Red State masses by selling them soccer balls and alfalfa sprouts, Wal-Mart sells them pop-tarts and beer. This must be stopped, we can't allow this to continue. Fight the power!
Posted by: Bart at November 14, 2004 6:23 AMYeah, exactly, Bart. I read this and I think, "Neat!" My progressive friends read it and are horrified. And isn't it cute the way Constance refers to them as "newest data-driven weapons?"
Posted by: Governor Breck at November 14, 2004 8:42 AMThe ironic thing is that if Bloomingdales or Sacks was doing the same thing to better target their customers' needs, the Times would report this as a major demostration of the advancement of technology within the cosmopolitan and highly-competitive New York City shopping environment, where every slightest whim of the high-achiever classes need to be reacted upon, as well as being an example of a use of techology within the city that suburban and rural dwellers can only dream about.
Posted by: John at November 14, 2004 10:01 AMWon't they be drinking warm beer, assuming that the power will be off for days afterwards? They need to sell beer in self-cooling cans. You pop the top, and in 60 seconds a cooling element has chilled the beer to 36 degrees.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at November 14, 2004 11:10 AMNo Cheetos?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at November 14, 2004 3:03 PMThis is why Wal-Mart is often considered a "tech" company, and included in various technological indexes.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 15, 2004 6:02 AM