All Things to All People

I read an article (read here) this morning about how WalMart is trying to become the world's largest general store.  The basic concept is that if you line your shelves with enough crap, you can capture enough of a portion of each market to be super-profitable.  Turns out that WalMart isn't the only store doing this.  It's a pretty popular trend, apparently.

I think it's a pretty stupid trend.  Way back when I was in Marketing 101, we learned about product-line extensions and brand-extensions.  For those without a marketing degree, a product-line extension is when you take an existing product and make some kind of incremental change to launch a new product.  Think about laundry detergent or toothpaste - whitening, brightening, with flavor crystals, etc.  Those are all product line extensions of the main product (Tide or Crest, etc).

A brand extension is when you take your brand name and extend it into a not-necessarily-related category.  The one example that always comes to my mind is Dannon Water.  Dannon is known for yogurt, but they tried to use the brand equity and consumer sentiment of their name to sell water.  In this case, it's been working.  Dannon Water still exists.  One of the main concerns with a brand-extension, as taught to me back in 101, was that you never wanted to dilute your brand's goodwill.

When I read that retailers are trying to be everything to everyone, this is immediately where my mind went.  I had recently been to Best Buy and noticed that they had a wide variety of fitness gear - some electronic and some not.  If I can buy free weights at Best Buy, why would i go to Modells?  If I can buy pet toys at Old Navy, where does PetSmart fit into my life?

Reflecting on this a little more, it made me realize that this phenomenon is kind of what's wrong with America. America used to be full of little boutiques and specialty stores.  It may have taken a full day to go to five different stores to buy five different items, but they were all hand-crafted quality goods.  It makes Americans look as cheap as the crap we import and stock in WalMart when we value our own convenience more than the quality of the goods we buy and the vendors we support.

I don't think that this trend is going to go away - it's just too appealing to buy everything in one store AND for the lowest price.  That being said, we should at least make a concerted effort to let 'general stores' handle the general merchandise while other stores still specialize.  After all, you cant be all things to all people - you will only ever be some things to some of the people.