Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal.
Wal-Mart has a new survey out today. From the AP:
Two years into a union-led campaign against Wal-Mart Stores Inc., only a fraction of 1 percent of American consumers have stopped shopping there because of negative publicity, according to a poll commissioned by Wal-Mart and made public Wednesday.
This might have been believable in some circles, but reality intruded just two days ago and naturally Wal-Mart's response is to lie like a rug:
Wal-Mart released the poll a day after a leak of internal Wal-Mart market research that found 14 percent of U.S. consumers are "conscientious objectors" with little loyalty to the world's largest retailer.
The market research posted on Consumerist.com was confirmed by Wal-Mart as genuine.
Tovar said "conscientious objector" referred to consumers who base purchases on a company's practices like charitable giving or environmental measures. The term does not mean Wal-Mart boycotters, Tovar said, noting that many of those consumers shop at Wal-Mart.
[Emphaisis added]
"Conscientious objector" means cares about charitable giving and the environment? OMG! How dumb do they think we are? Read the PowerPoint at the Consumerist and it's easy to see the fatal problem with this Wal-Flack's interpretation. The point of the presentation was to highlight the key groups that Wal-Mart wants to cultivate as shoppers in the future: "Price Value Shoppers," "Brand Aspirationals" and "Price-Sensitive Affluents." "Price-Sensitive Affluents" are 11% of the public according to this presentation. "Conscientious Objectors" are 14%.
If "Conscientious Objectors" were reachable by Wal-Mart, the company should have made them one of the target groups as they constitute a bigger market than "Price-Sensitive Affluents." Or turn the whole thing around – since everyone knows Wal-Mart is doing everything possible to reach shoppers who care about charitable giving and the environment, why weren't "Conscientious Objectors" a target group then?
Things really are going bad for Wal-Mart these days. They can't even lie well anymore.
JR