Interview with "One Nation Under Wal-Mart" author
If Wal-Mart were a country, they'd rank 20th in GDP. John Dicker is the authror of One Nation Under Wal-Mart, interviewed here. In answer to one question he says, ``On a basic level, Wal-Mart is a master of data. I would love to turn loose a sociologist or an anthropologist at Bentonville's information systems department. Other retailers merchandise for Father's Day or Labor Day weekend or Back-to-School. Wal-Mart can merchandise for the weather. With the hurricanes last year in Florida, they mined data from stores in the hurricane's path to find out what people buy when they know a hurricane's approaching. They nailed it down specifically to strawberry pop-tarts.''
``Toaster-oven treats in general were big, but #1 -- strawberry pop-tarts. This is a company with nearly 5,000 stores worldwide, but they know in a Florida hurricane, strawberry pop-tarts. And they have the infrastructure to get those strawberry pop-tarts into stores within a day or two.''
Ah, the great American way of life. I don't know if it's scarier that Wal-Mart knows this, or that Strawberry Pop-Tarts are really the number-one Wal-Mart-available commodity that potential hurricane victims purchase...God bless America!