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You may have seen stories about Walmart retooling the assortment of merchandise it carries, part of an "It's Back" campaign that restores several product categories and brands it discarded back in 2009. The idea was to cut back on items such as hobbies and fabric to give more room to bigger-ticket items, like TVs and toys.
But according to a report on Bloomberg.com, one casualty of that move could be a reduction in the amount of space dedicated to electronics goods, specifically flat-panel TVs.
As sales of electronics slump in its stores, and brick-and-mortar retailers face increasing competition from online sellers, Walmart will cut the amount of floor space given to items such as flat-screen TVs and expand other areas, such as apparel, according to a Walmart executive quoted by Bloomberg while speaking at a recent retail conference.
And at a financial conference earlier this year, another Walmart executive blamed electronics for poor same-store results, saying it couldn't sell enough TVs—typically a low-margin product—to justify the floor space it received. The amount of space that will be cut from the electronics and gadget areas—which increased in size by more than 20 percent during the 2009 merchandising shuffle—will vary from store to store, and the retailer will continue selling TVs online via at Walmart.com.
We'll be monitoring a few nearby stores to see which (if any) brands take the hardest hits in the cutback, and how the reduced floor space affects the way TVs are merchandised and sold. If you're a Walmart customer who has recently purchased a TV from the chain, let us know how happy you were with the experience.
—James K. Willcox
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