Lost in Translation

I read this great article on Wal*Mart today in the International Herald Tribune. It was all about how the American retail giant has failed in Germany and other countries around the world. Financial reasons aside, there are some big... I mean BIG differences between the uber-American shopper and the rest of the world. Do they really make the employees sing the corporate cheer before work everyday? And ice skates in Mexico? Really? Who works in merchandising at this place? Don't they know it's HOT in Mexico?

Here are some highlights:

Wal-Mart's overseas push can be lost in translation
New York Times

Wal-Mart's woes are not limited to Germany. The retailing colossus has struggled in several countries, from South Korea to Brazil, as it discovered that its formula for success - low prices, zealous inventory control and a dizzying array of merchandise - did not translate well in markets with their own muscular discount chains and shoppers with very different habits.

Wal-Mart also is trying to integrate acquisitions with more sensitivity, a process that involves hard issues, like deciding whether to consolidate multiple foreign headquarters, and soft issues, like how aggressively to push Wal-Mart's corporate culture on non- American employees. In Germany, Wal- Mart stopped requiring salesclerks to smile at customers - a practice that some male shoppers interpreted as flirting - and scrapped the employee morning chant that spells out Wal-Mart.

"People found these things strange - Germans just don't behave that way," said Hans-Martin Poschmann. But the problems it encountered in Germany echo elsewhere. For example, it never established comfortable ties with German labor unions.

Some of Wal-Mart's missteps - selling golf clubs in Brazil, where the game is unfamiliar, or ice skates in Mexico - have become the stuff of urban legend. But even more subtle differences in shopping habits have tripped up the company. In South Korea, Wal- Mart's stores originally had taller racks than those of local rivals, forcing shoppers to use ladders or stretch for items on high shelves. Wal-Mart's utilitarian design - ceilings with exposed pipes - put off shoppers accustomed to the decorated ceilings in E-Mart stores.

"They have stacks of goods in boxes," said Lee Jin Sook, 46, a housewife traveling by metro in Seoul. "That may be good for some American housewives who drive out in their own cars." But Koreans, she said, prefer smaller packages: "Why would you buy a box of shampoo bottles?"