Always Low Prices Meets Lower Prices

Wal-Mart has come to dominate the grocery industry by offering wide product choices and low prices in their 2700 super centers. The company today is the biggest of the industry’s Standard Leaders. (See “Audio Tip #181: Using Physical Measures to Control Costs” on StrategyStreet.com.) And because the company has a well earned reputation for low prices, it found new customers during the last recession.

But underneath the new customer growth it found that some of their Core customers had migrated even further down on the food chain to discounting competitors, such as Save-A-Lot and Aldi stores. These companies offer even lower prices. They are able to offer these lower prices because they are Strippers. These are low-end, Price Leader (see “Audio Tip #83: Price Leader Products and Companies”), competitors who strip benefits from the product offering in order to achieve a low cost structure and consequent very low prices, which attract price-sensitive customers.

Save-A-Lot and Aldi compete with similar business models. They offer from 1400 to 1800 items, which is a small fraction of the offerings in a typical supermarket. The vast majority of their products are private labeled. The stores themselves are small, 15,000 to 17,000 square feet, and the store displays and amenities are spartan. Still, these retailers are growing relatively rapidly in the U.S. Wal-Mart feels like it needs to respond to their growth.

Wal-Mart does offer smaller stores. Their Neighborhood Markets concept are grocery stores in small towns and suburbs. But these are larger formats, averaging 42,000 square feet. The company’s small store format, called Marketside, has a 15,000 square foot footprint but has achieved relatively little presence so far. The Marketside business model has yet to develop any vibrancy.

Can Wal-Mart succeed at the very low end of the marketplace? I wouldn’t bet against them. They have succeeded in Mexico by offering seven separate store formats to meet the needs of consumers at various budget levels.