Wal-Mart To Stop Sharing Sales Data

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it will stop sharing sales information with ACNielsen Corp. and five other data-tracking firms in an effort to keep that information out of the hands of its competitors.

“Competitively, you don’t necessarily want your competition to know any more about you than is absolutely necessary,” Bill Wertz, a spokesman for the Bentonville-based retailer, said.

Last week, Wal-Mart mailed letters informing the companies that as of the end of July, it would stop providing the data.

Wertz said Wal-Mart has been providing the information to various data-collection companies off and on for some time. The world’s largest retailer was paid a fee for the information, and the companies charged a fee to others who requested access to the data.

Wertz said Wal-Mart’s sales numbers for individual items were included with that of several other retailers, so information on Wal-Mart sales alone wasn’t provided to those who purchased the data.

Initially, Wal-Mart thought it was valuable to the company to be included in the industry-wide data, but now the Bentonville-based company believes it would benefit more by not being included.

The data, gathered by scanners at stores, are used by other companies to gauge the performance of the products they sell through Wal-Mart and the retail industry as a whole. Wal-Mart has gained its top retail ranking by offering the lowest prices on everything from toothpaste to television sets at its 2,634 stores.

Wal-Mart will continue to track the data itself as it has been doing through checkout scanners. If a particular Spaulding basketball is selling well, for example, that information will be passed on to the vendor who can make sure more basketballs are being manufactured, Wertz said.

Wal-Mart’s shares (NYSE: WMT) closed Friday up 68 cents at $54.10 and were up another 21 cents by 10:30 a.m. Monday to $54.31.