Line extensions are nothing new, particularly for Walmart as it expands the products and services it offers. Just as global rival Tesco offers shoppers everything from travel & pet insurance to mortgages, Walmart is constantly looking to add new things for shoppers to buy.
Its latest attempt, however, has suffered a bit of backlash. Not from union activists, fair trade proponents, or People of Walmart... no, this time Walmart ran afoul of the Internet.
Yes, that's right... the whole thing.
It happens to retailers all the time... Earlier this year, Amazon's top selling item was the "three wolf moon" shirt... all because some clever prankster posted a tongue-in-cheek review:
"This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened."
To which over 700 people replied with claims the shirt could cure baldness, attract women, and save their house from foreclosure.
And just like that, it went viral... climbing sites like Reddit and Digg repeatedly... spawning variations and even combining with other Internet memes like "keyboard cat" to create all new products on custom apparel sites like Threadless, Zazzle and CafePress.
This burst of popularity - albeit in a mocking way - propelled the shirt to the top of Amazon's sales, where even six months later... it is still #7 on Amazon's clothing best sellers.
This was a perfect example of how the power of viral communication could catapult a small brand's product to the top of the world's largest retailer's sales. The shirt was a quality product, granted appealing to a certain style, and despite the ludicrous claims, people actually BOUGHT the product in droves.
Fast forward six months... A couple days before Halloween, Walmart began listing caskets and urns on its ecommerce site. While the news was initially greeted with concern for competing funeral homes, it quickly was eclipsed with the Internet's reaction to Walmart's new items. Reddit users highlighted the irony of being able to select "Bill Me Later" for a casket purchase, among other comments... and the comments quickly migrated to new faux reviews on Walmart.com, including:
"I picked one up to bury my cat in. Other than having room for about 100 cats, it worked well. Oh, had to dig a really big hole too, and that was rough on my back. But at least when my dog dies I can just open 'er up again and stick him in too."
It was reviews like this that this weekend led Walmart to pull all the comments and begin (we assume) censoring the comments and reviews for more than just offensive language.
While Walmart has every right to do this, it's a mistake. Part of the power of the "Web 2.0" communication model is that retailers can get instant, accurate, and widespread market insights into perceptions of your brand simply by listening to the aggregate feedback from the Internet, and quite honestly, the counter-reaction to Walmart's entry into the casket market is a part of the brand positioning of the retailer. And as Glenn Beck learned the hard way after trying to stifle a parody site via WIPO legal attacks, fighting criticism - whether legitimate or obnoxious - by stifling it only increases the ire and vitriol of a worldwide population armed with blogs, Twitter postings, and Facebook groups.
Would someone actually buying a casket be so offended by comments like the above that they wouldn't purchase it from Walmart? Unlikely... About 95% of people viewing the cat review above rated it as "helpful," and even if done facetiously, it shows that the overwhelming majority of people viewing the review were not offended. And given that Walmart got FAR more publicity through the viral spread of comments about its caskets than from its press releases, shutting that down is depriving the retailer of communication channels in both directions.
The Internet of 2010 is all about two-way communication: sharing information with your customers, listening to their thoughts and feedback, and finding better ways to meet their needs. Walmart's decision to stifle comments on their Web site is the shortsighted equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and chanting "la la la la la la la" to drown out constructive criticism from a trusted friend: you might make it through the encounter with your pride intact, but in the end you've missed something you needed to hear.
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