NEW YORK — Knowledge Wal-Mart has gleaned over the last three years to improve the customer experience at store level will be incorporated into the stores it plans to open over the next three years, Raul Vasquez, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. division of Wal-Mart Stores, Bentonville, Ark., told the 38th annual Bank of America Investment Conference here yesterday. “Stores will be significantly different in terms of how we engage customers and how we present a better customer experience in terms of more exciting visuals and product positioning to grow categories,” he explained. In terms of the Marketside stores Wal-Mart is developing, Vasquez said, “We have a small-format group to develop new concepts, and new ideas to help us learn things we could do in the broader supercenter markets and also to understand convenience, because convenience is clearly a trend of the future. With the population aging and stores probably getting smaller, we’re looking at how we can build more efficient stores and how to develop a broader portfolio of formats beyond 195,000-square-foot supercenters.” Among the things Wal-Mart learned from its upscale supercenter in Plano, Texas, he said, was “that customers like the open space and the [cleaner] sightlines that make it easier to navigate the store.” In terms of organics, he said Wal-Mart learned “that the real trend is locally grown. And now that we have the ability to communicate that to customers, you’ll see a big program in the spring of next year than can really impact the locally grown strategy.”

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