A small move from Wal-Mart Stores is giving packaged-food companies a big headache.The world of retailing.
The retail giant has tweaked its promotional strategy, ditching some in-store product displays that put popular brands in front of consumers at the end of aisles and near cash registers. In turn, Wal-Mart is asking suppliers to take money they would have invested in displays and promotions and instead pour it into cutting the cost of their products as the company reverts to its “everyday low prices” mantra.
The request is not sitting well with some packaged-goods companies, whose sales are getting dinged by the change. Some are fighting back.
The biggest names in consumer products and packaged foods—Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Nestle, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg's and Mondelez International, to name a few—sell significant amounts of their goods through Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer. Because of its dominance, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company can affect the fortunes of even these big suppliers with incremental changes in the way it does business.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
How Wal-Mart is hurting Mondelez
Crain's Chicago Business reports:
