WAL-MART PRODUCE GOING UP FRONT AND ETHNIC

RALPH RAIOLA

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores here has moved produce to the front of more than 125 supercenters as part of a greater commitment to the department and to boosting sales.

The chain has also begun to act on a plan to remerchandise the produce departments with a bent toward ethnic and regional preferences.

"We absolutely believe that [these moves] will have a great impact on sales," Nick White, executive vice president for supercenters, told SN.

In existing stores, the chain has been changing the layouts to get produce up front, while the strategy is being built into the design of new stores, White said.

"We're locating produce at the front of all of our stores with the exception of the smallest ones," he explained. "To go back and retrofit all our stores is not in our interest at this point."

While stepping up the regional, ethnic and even economic awareness of the department is more of a philosophical change, it does involve some reworking of the product mix, White said.

This new twist in ethnic and regional emphasis is a product of monthly consumer focus groups that allow consumers to voice their opinions regarding how the stores provide for local communities, White said.

"We've just given it more emphasis in 1996, and we'll give it more emphasis in 1997," White said. "We continue to stress regionally correct, ethnically correct and economically correct merchandising."

The chain is not necessarily expanding the departments to accommodate this philosophy, and stores must work with what they have, he added. "We may have to reduce the amount of space we use with the regular [produce] program."

White said the most involved part of the program is figuring out what consumers are looking for, and then acquiring those products. The effort is worth it, he said, when you consider the alternative. "If you don't have it, they'll find it somewhere else."

Stores are not likely to carry specific products unless they are in great demand by consumers in the neighborhood. "We've got to have a big enough following [to stock a product]," White said.

Aside from the monthly focus groups, Wal-Mart is using its regional buyers in each of the chain's warehouses as another effective way to keep up with what consumers are calling for. Regional buyers are given 80 to 100 stores to cover, which White believes allows them to remain up to date on consumers' needs.