ABSTRACT
Does Wal-Mart feel uneasy that despite its impressive presence and growth, it does not have a successful loyalty program with its customers? Is identifying its valuable customers and rewarding them individually never going to be a part of its marketing strategy? For the moment, Wal-Mart does not care what an individual customer buys at its stores, but by promoting its own website (walmart.com), it does admit that it does not want to be left behind in the online business, where the rule of the game is to enhance the share of your customers’ wallet by learning more about each one of them individually. At Sam’s Club, the warehouse chain promoted by Wal-Mart, there already exists rich data on each individual customer. We do not know if walmart.com or Sam’s Club will at some time overtake the mainline stores’ business. But WalMart is willing to be prepared, if and when that day arrives. Thus, the first learning that the changing marketplace offers is:
L1: Think of customers as individuals, and not aggregates.
