Talking big mobile - The Walmart approach

Walmart anticipated 40% of their online traffic in the holiday season would come from mobile, with much of that from people shopping on their phones while they're inside one of Walmart’s  4,000 stores.

Keep in mind that Walmart are the guys that found a link between Dads buying bulk-packs of baby-napkins and six-packs of beer on Friday evenings, became the first retailer to merchandise beer in the baby category and enjoyed a 30% uplift in sales as a result…

In other words, with a data-warehouse bigger than the Pentagon, they make data work, while other retailers look for logical connections that follow traditional patterns of shopper behaviour and focus on ‘tidy’ categories, adapting gradually to change, if they must…

This is why Walmart are taking a direct approach and are going all out with mobile. The idea is not to make it an either/or option; instead, their apps cater to people who are already shopping inside a Walmart store.

If you opt into "in-store mode" the feature aimed at keeping their shoppers buying from Walmart, even via online when what they want isn't in the store, they will use your location to provide you with an app tailored for that store.

With 60% of its shoppers opting-in within two weeks of launch, and 140m weekly shoppers, the Walmart approach makes other retailers seem like they are toying with mobile…or worse…

Time for a trip to Leeds?

(Thanks to Sophie Schwartz and Jason Goldberg for the link)