JANUARY 23, 2007 -- A year after Wal-Mart laid out ambitious plans to become a much bigger player in the organic foods business, the giant retailer is running into trouble over its organic effort with consumer activists and government regulators, reports BusinessWeek Online.
It was March of 2006, at an analysts' conference, when Wal-Mart's vice president of marketing, Stephen Quinn, said that the company would double its offerings of organic products within weeks. The company promised to make organics affordable to more consumers by offering what executives called "the Wal-Mart price."
In July, the Bentonville, Ark.-retailer even launched an ad campaign on The Food Network, HGTV, and in parenting and women's magazines, with tag lines like: "Know what goes well with organic milk? Organic cereal and knock-knock jokes."
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