The products were expensive, and customers had to pay membership fees in advance. The former tested customers' spending power, while the latter challenged their spending concepts. For some Chinese people of that era, I was already giving you face by coming to your store to buy things. Why did you ask me for money in advance when I didn't buy anything?
It can be imagined that in 2012, Wen Ande was faced with a difficult situation where the consumption concepts of customers had yet to be popularized, and even the concepts of Sam's Club employees had yet to be popularized.
How difficult is it? Until 2004, Sam's Club, which had been in China for 8 years, had only opened 4 stores. Before that, some stores had been transformed into Walmart stores because the number of members and renewal rates did not meet the minimum standards for store operations. Yes, now is the trend of Walmart stores being transformed into Sam's stores, but before Wen Ande joined in 2012, Sam's Club was just the opposite.
Four changes of Wen Ande
Wen Ande's joining can be regarded as a turning point in the fate of Sam's Club China. Wen Ande made the following major decisions:
First, significantly reduce the number of SKU items.
Before this, Sam's Club had about 10,000 items. Wen Ande started to cut down the items and gradually reduced them to the current fixed 4,000 items. Wen Ande's strategy of reducing products is to reduce the difficulty of customers' selection and ensure that they don't have to worry about "choice difficulty" when shopping at Sam's Club. No matter which product you choose, what you get in your basket is good and reliable.
This move was once met with great doubts within Sam's Club, and this doubt is still prevalent in the physical retail industry: after reducing the number of goods, it is difficult to meet the different needs of different customer groups.
However, Wen Ande, as the COO at that time, insisted on reducing the number of products. His consideration was that Sam's Club was targeting the middle and high-end customer groups, and Sam's Club also provided middle and high-end products. Products without quality differences and too many choices would only increase customers' internal consumption of ordering decisions among homogeneous products. Moreover, Sam's Club, which was targeting the middle and high-end customer groups, did not have "different customer groups".
