• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, September 15, 2010

Wal-Mart Stores has been candid about its mistakes in the way it pared back assortment in recent months, and in a presentation for investors, Bill Simon, CEO of its U.S. division, shed some light on how the retailer is hoping to win back the shoppers it sent away.

While the higher-income shoppers who discovered Walmart during the recession are still roaming its aisles, "the traffic loss is in the middle and toward the lower end of the business, and that's primarily from the assortment issues," he told those attending the Goldman Sachs Seventeenth Annual Retailing Conference, noting that high gas prices are still a concern for consumers. "If you're not sure we have an item, than our one-stop shopping promise can't be fulfilled and gas prices are important. But if we have everything shoppers want, as we have in the past, gas prices might work in our favor."