Localization of Sam Walton's Vision

Strolling down the aisles of a Walmart in the U.S., one would find not only a gazillion different products and agricultural produces, but cooked items ranging from sliced pepperoni pizzas to grilled chicken salad in Cajun dressing. But at the end of the day, all items sold are unmistakably targeting at the American taste.

When I first heard that Walmart has a presence in China, my first reaction was whether they would know the Chinese consumer well enough to do well here. My experience at two Walmart Supercenters in Shenzhen (allegedly two of the most profitable Walmart locations anywhere in the world) and here in Beijing confirms that Walmart has done their homework before investing here in China.


Here in China, Walmart "localizes" by filling shelves with products and produces that are distinctly Chinese: dried sausages stuffed with duck livers and fat, pigeons cooked in sweetened soy sauce, pork knuckles braised with star anise, aromatic ginger and peppercorns, pickled radishes and cucumbers, and, you read it correctly, live turtles, bluntly labeled to reflect its eventual destiny not in an aquarium but at the dining table. A Walmart here is imbued with a fragrance that is unmistakably raw, but also very Chinese. Instead of seeing chicken meat modularized and prepackaged into frozen, brick-like constructions, a Chinese Walmart goes so far as to allow the shopper to see the rawness of a chicken's skinning and frenching, in ways that would probably raise a few eyebrows with PETA in the U.S. In a sense, this rawness brings honesty to what we eat --that what we eat were once living animals and plants, not merely goblets or slabs of proteins or cellulose with a bar-code and a USDA nutrition tag.


Each Walmart location seems to cater to a slightly different crowd, e.g. the Walmart in Nanshan, Shenzhen has an older crowd while the Walmart in Zhongguancun, Beijing has a younger, college-educated crowd. In any case, seasoned shoppers would guardedly stand next to mountains upon mountains of geometrically stacked produces and juggle with each item on the stack until they find and isolate the best ones that pass their touch and nose tests. Little kids would at times stray away from their distracted parents to munch on bite-size samples at food counters. The occasional first-timers would try, without success, to haggle with Walmart associates over prices. All that, on top of raised voices projected by associates across counters and wrecking sounds generated by shopping carts slamming into each other, form the basis of an improvised, locally-performed symphony of sounds and vibrations. I also can't help but hear, on top of my head, cash registers ringing and Walmart shareholders laughing all the way to financial freedom.