Walmart, the world’s largest retailer by sales, is launching a push to reach lower-income and rural consumers in China with a new “compact hypermarket” format originally developed in its Latin American markets.
Doug McMillon, chief executive of Walmart’s international business, told the Financial Times that the US retailer had opened what is expected to be the first of a series of new stores in China using the low-cost, bare-bones model of its Bodega Aurrera stores in Mexico, and its Changomas chain in Argentina.
He said that compared to the retailer’s larger Supercenters, the compact hyper “is a smaller store, typically a cheaper physical plant; a cement floor, perhaps brick walls, sometimes we don’t have air conditioning”.