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Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), the largest grocer in the United States with a 20% market share, has unveiled the logo for its new pilot small-format grocery stores called Marketside. The new grocery stores will be 15,000 square feet. That’s about half the size of Wal-Mart’s existing smallest grocery stores.
Wal-Mart claims the company is trying to create a friendlier, neighborhood grocery store with Marketside. It’s expected that Wal-Mart will use Marketside to broaden its line of private-label grocery items. Safeway (NYSE: SWY) and Tesco (with its Fresh & Easy) are also rolling out small-format, neighborhood stores, which Marketside would directly compete with.
What do you think of the new logo? I like it. I think it’s clean and appropriate. I think it’s interesting that it has no relationship or similarity to the Wal-Mart logo. And what do you think of the Marketside concept overall?
Tags: Wal-Mart, Marketside, Tesco, Fresh and Easy, Safeway, branding, logos, marketing
Walmart is a great company to work for!! I’ve had many great oppurtunities with thus great company! It just really bothers me to bear people speak so negative about Walmart. The ones that usually speak so negative are usually unhappy associates. If you are so unhappy why do you still work there?
I’ve actually been to one of these stores, and had no clue it was connected to a big corporation. It’s a very good concept that should benefit Wal-mart very much.
They’re trying to get a foothold in Aldi’s market …
hum..
You can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig and it still smells like s**t!
Disguising Walmart does nothing to improve the working conditions for Walmart employees, save the environment from the plight of Walmart, stop Walmart from evading taxes. Are you all really this stupid? Do you think Americans are this stupid? Walmart is one of the worst things to happen to this country. It and its executives have destroyed more of this country and the spirit of her people than any military war could do. Wake up people! It’s not all about the Benjamins.
The Marketside logo is decent; good but not acceptional in my opinion. Of course, what really matters is how consumers respond to it, and how it fits the Marketside format once its completed and the stores open this summer.
The stacked fruit is kind of cool in my opinion. There was mention by a commenter that “you really never actually see stacked fruit.” That’s irrelevant, a logo need not be a literal depiction of what one actually empirically views in reality. For God sake, they do call it “graphic arts”–let there be a little “art” in the “graphic.”
A big part of the Marketside grocery store format will be fresh foods positioning. As such, the stacked fruits are obviously an attempt to depict “fresh.”
We’ve written much about Wal-Mart’s small-format development (Marketside), Tesco’s Fresh & Easy, and other small-format grocery stores at Natural~Specialty Foods Memo.
http://www.naturalspecialtyfoodsmemo.blogspot.com
A view key words you can type in on the blog search box are: Fresh and Easy, Marketside, small-format grocery stores, small-format retailing, Small-Marts (a term we coined for Wal-Marts’ small-format Marketside format development) and small-format food retailing revolution. Of course you can look through the archives as well.
The big dilemma for those of us who wright blogs and websites however is: Do we follow the marketside logo literally and use lower-case when we write marketside? Or do we follow tradition and capitalize Marketside. Thus far I choose the latter. I notice you do as well Susan. I’m likely to stick with the traditional.
1543 days ago
[...] from brandcurve.com optimistically called the logo “clean and appropriate.” I’m afraid in my eyes is [...]
Allison and JP, I have to agree with you that Wal-Mart has a bad reputation of being the big bad wolf and making smaller “mom and pop” businesses shut their doors. Therefore, removing the relationship from Wal-Mart in the branding for Marketside is a good idea. I wonder if the company will be able to carry that positioning throughout the store experience. I fear “Wal-Mart” will creep in very quickly.
Looks like a nice departure from the Wal-Mart brand which just may give it a good lift from its traditional demographic. Interesting strategy to perpetuate its own line of products…
I think its a good thing that it doesn’t look much like the Wal-Mart logo, since so many people attach a negative image of a huge impersonal corporation. but because they will be a part of Wal-Mart, they should be able to offer real low prices since Wal-Mart buys in enormous quantities at large discounts. It looks like Marketside will be able to benefit from Wal-Mart’s pricing strategies without the bad rep.