Company Culture

S Wal Mart is now the largest grocery retailer in the world, the largest apparel retailer in the world, and the largest jeweler in the world.

These facts, especially when coupled with the company’s sales, profits, and growth figures, are impressive, but you might still ask whether a company this large and dominant can really have fans. Though some skeptics might believe that emotional bonds are reserved for smaller, less mainstream brands, we found in a series of focus groups conducted for the International Mass Retail Association (IMRA), that the answer is a robust yes. Some people told us they visit their local WalMart as many as three times a day to see and talk to friends they’ve made in the store. Many customers talked about the excitement they feel when they find a good deal. Many college students told us it was the number one store they shopped or wished they could shop because it had everything they could possibly want at reasonable prices.

But talk is cheap, as they say. Measuring consumers’ behavior to determine their loyalty to a brand is even more important than their words, and Wal Mart’s phenomenal sales can attest to consumers’ followthrough on their said devotion to the stores.

Creating fans for a fledgling company is challenging, but retaining their connection as the company becomes the largest corporation in the world boils down to maintaining total dedication to the customer, just as KISS did with its fans. Wal Mart’s founder, its culture and values, and its locations support the corporate charge of staying close to the customer. Some might chuckle at the small town roots of Wal Mart and the fact that it remains headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, but life in this small town is more representative of life in the vast majority of America. Potential disconnections between customer and company culture are minimized because life in Bentonville mirrors more closely the lifestyle of the target Wal Mart customer than life in New York City. No one represented the WalMart customer better than company founder Sam Walton; he walked, talked, and lived the brand. Analyzing Wal Mart’s success strategies is impossible without first talking about Mr. Sam-the Elvis of retail.