Wal-Mart Stores is attempting to goose sluggish same-store sales by breaking the one-store-fits-all mold--a radical departure for the world's largest retailer, which built its empire on the strength
of standardization. It is divvying up its approximately 3,400 U.S. stores into six different models, targeted to corresponding demographic groups: African-Americans, the affluent, empty-nesters,
Hispanics, suburbanites and rural residents. Eduardo Castro-Wright--chief executive of the company's U.S. stores and architect of the new approach--beefed up Wal-Mart's marketing department several
years ago, adding Ph.D.s in areas such as ethnology, food science, and research and evaluation. The department began researching its shoppers last year, using census data and customer feedback, among
other things, to break them into demographic groups. By offering customers all the same things, Castro-Wright says, "you end up under-serving everyone because you don't have an offering that is
specific to that customer segment." While the company continues to open new stores at a voracious rate, sales gains at existing stores have been sliding since the late 1990s. About 85 percent of the
U.S. population shops at a Wal-Mart at least once a year.
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