What percentage of profit is generated by products costing more than
$20 in large retailer such as Wal Mart?
I suspect that more than 40% of their profit comes from selling items
costing more than $20.

I suspect you are correct, however many of the buyers of over $20
items came into the store for a one dollar item. The over $20 dollar
item was an impules purchase. Concidering value of shelf space,
handleing costs and and inventory shrinkage, many of the low cost
items earn no profit directly, but they are important to retaining
high customer flow.  Neil

This may not prove terribly useful, but is food for thought
nevertheless. Wal-mart stores are split up by square footage, not
ACV/slotting. Sales and performance in stores are measured per square
foot. Many stores have grid maps in the managers' offices to
facilitate this. Also keep in mind that Wal-mart deals in groceries
and you may find data that factors in their sales from SAMS wholesale
club(who they own).

Hello lahore-ga,

Wal-Mart is in a class by itself. You might find this article
interesting and helpful in reframing your question. Good luck.

~ czh ~ 


http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html
December 2003 -- The Wal-Mart You Don't Know

The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost.
Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does
business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping
our way straight to the unemployment line?

Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's
largest company--bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General
Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5
billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what

number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own
category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has
any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C.
Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined. "Clearly," says Edward Fox, head
of Southern Methodist University's J.C. Penney Center for Retailing
Excellence, "Wal-Mart is more powerful than any retailer has ever
been." It is, in fact, so big and so furtively powerful as to have
become an entirely different order of corporate being.