Without repeating the details of that piece, nor the one preceding it over the weekend in the Journal, I'll just state that Ms. Roehm seems to be the latest victim of the giant retailer's management ineptitude.
From the article's recounting of her product development and marketing background, Ms. Roehm seems to be the genuine article, when it comes to getting results with fresh marketing communications approaches. Wal-Mart hired her to support their ill-fated entry into upscale retail merchandise earlier this year.
As my partner suggests, and I agree, it looks like Lee Scott is trying to eliminate any trace of the personnel who remind him of the mistaken strategy. Not that Roehm was its architect. She simply came in to execute according to the product strategy playbook they gave her. Julie Roehm may have helped, but, frankly, I've never felt that good promotional efforts can overcome weak product and marketing strategies.
The entire ad agency firing flap seems to be a smokescreen as well. More effort to erase all external traces of the retailer's attempted dalliance with upscale consumers.
More than anything, sadly, I think this episodes reinforces the strategic mismanagement of Wal-Mart over the past few years. The accompanying stock price chart for Wal-Mart and the S&P500, from Yahoo's site, indicates how badly the firm has stalled this past year.Wal-Mart is simply striking out as it attempts to cope with the limits to its revenue and profit growth. It had a successful model, before saturating the appropriate areas of the US with its stores. Perhaps it will find more success overseas, although it recently retrenched in at least one foreign country. But I don't think the source of Wal-Mart's stock's return to a path of consistently superior total returns lies with its current product and marketing strategies.
No comments:
Post a Comment