Why Walmart Should Build vs. Buy
Carol Spieckerman's comments on today's Retail Wire discussion: Should Walmart Acquire Family Dollar?
Gobbling up other banners can be a perilous and disjointed plan these days as Supervalu and others have found out. Up to this point, Walmart has taken a measured and strategic approach to small format rollouts and has had no intention of hitting Family-Dollar-like scale. Walmart won't have to in order to make its omni-channel strategy sing. It is already a multi-format retailer and continues to work toward driving brand recognition for its separately-branded Neighborhood Market concept. The last thing it needs is to tack on thousands of lower-end stores and tackle the varying productivity levels that would come with the deal.
Although Walmart and dollar stores are often lumped together as "discounters," their business models are apples and oranges. Walmart should march ahead with building its own small formats.