Business Model Lessons from Wal-Mart SKU Reductions

Last year, Wal-Mart dramatically reduced the number of products (SKUs) offered at all their stores.  This SKU rationalization plan was based upon the premise that consumers wanted clean-looking stores with just the major brands.  Known as brand fatigue, the logic was that consumers grew tired of looking at too many brands on the shelf. Inherent […]

Wal-Mart’s Evil Business Model?

There is a large segment of the population who believe Wal-Mart is evil.  They kill small retailers to create low paying jobs and the like.  However, I read something interesting in The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman.  In this book, Fishman describes how Wal-Mart single-handedly eliminated wasteful packaging of deodorant.  During the early 1990s, metal […]