Wal-Mart Looks Down On the Competition


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	Wal-Mart Looks Down On the Competition By Mary Motta Senior Business Correspondent posted: 07:25 am ET 22 March 2000

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Satellite pictures scientists use to look at the ravages of oil spills, landslides and flooding could be used by merchants to bring customers into stores to buy their wares.

In fact the king of merchants -- Wal-Mart -- has considered using these pictures from space to learn what its competitors are up to now that it has decided to start selling groceries along with its bed sheets and blow dryers.

The IKONOS Satellite

The IKONOS satellite orbits the Earth in a sun-synchronous orbit - meaning it simply follows the sun as it travels around the globe - and its Eastman Kodak-built camera is an optical imaging device.

The near-perfect optical sharpness of Kodak's telescope has never beenachieved in any commercial space camera. The satellite circles the globe 14 times per day, or once every 98 minutes. The imagery is stored in Space Imaging's digital CARTERRA archive and can be made available to customers very quickly - inas little as a few hours or days.

Images

This IKONOS image features Tiananmen Square and the Temple of Heaven. The red area in the center of Tiananmen Square, upper right, is a large carpet. The Great Hall of the People, on the western edge of Tiananmen Square, is the meeting place for the Natio

Space Imaging's IKONOS satellite captured this image of the Coliseum in Rome, Italy, from an orbit of more than 400 miles on October 9, 1999. IKONOS, the most powerful Earth-imaging satellite available to the public.

Situated on the south side of the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. the Jefferson Memorial is shown here in the IKONOS' satellites first public image.

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With $150 billion in annual sales last year, Wal-Mart hopes to remain the number one retailer on the planet by setting up 150 so-called super-centers around the country where it can sell groceries alongside general merchandise.

To that end, it is considering using high-resolution satellite images to analyze the best location to set up new stores, as well as pinpoint where competitors -- such as Sears and Kmart -- have set up their stores.

With a budget of $4.5 billion slated to build these super-centers, Wal-Mart approached Space-Imaging in Thornton, Colorado to help them scope out new sites.

"Wal-Mart approached [Space Imaging] because they realized that some areas are difficult for building new stores," said Thomas Graff, chairman of the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville who helped Space Imaging with evaluating Wal-Mart and the discount retail industry.

"The Wal-Mart study was our first attempt to educate the retail industryon the value of using remote sensing technology."
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By evaluating an area by satellite, Wal-Mart realized it could get the information it needed quickly, rather than having to spend the time and money to send someone there to collect the data, Graff said.

Wal-Mart did not return repeated calls from SPACE.com for comment.

By using the photos from Space Imaging�s high-resolution IKONOS satellite, analysts prepared a study for Wal-Mart concentrating on a 15-mile (24 kilometer) radius from the center of Springfield, Missouri where the retailer has three stores.

The analysts counted cars in competitors� parking lots. They also were able to pinpoint potential customers by analyzing traffic from new neighborhoods in the area.

In addition, they located areas where there were flooding problems and fault zones, and advised Wal-Mart not to build there.

"The Wal-Mart study was our first attempt to educate the retail industry on the value of using remote sensing technology," says Mark Brender, director of Washington operations for Satellite Imaging.

And he said that several other industries could benefit from these pictures.

"This technology is visual truth serum," Brender said.

But these commercial high-resolution photos worry government officials who believe they could encourage industrial espionage, terrorism or more cross-border military attacks in the developing world.

"There are security implications," said Timothy Stryker at the Department of Commerce, who licenses remote sensing firms for the agency. "But the technology is important for industry because it helps make sure U.S. companies stay at the forefront."