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Wal-Mart logs on to Facebook
Reaching out to university students...

By Reuters

Published: Thursday 09 August 2007

Forget exchanging letters, phone calls or emails. This year, Wal-Mart wants students heading to university to log on to Facebook to design their dorm room with their roommates.

The world's largest retailer on Wednesday is launching the Roommate Style Match group on Facebook, a social-networking site that has millions of university-age users, in the hopes of grabbing a larger chunk of back-to-school shopping dollars.

Facebook users who join the Wal-Mart group will be able to take a quiz to determine their decorating style and get a list of 'recommended products' they can buy at Wal-Mart to mesh their style with their roommate's.

Students can also download a shopping list of dorm room items sold at Wal-Mart, link to Wal-Mart's website promoting 'earth-friendly' products, or click on Soundcheck, Wal-Mart's website showing musical performances by singers like Bon Jovi and Mandy Moore.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said of the retailer's use of a social networking site: "We realise that this is an audience that we need to be talking to and that this is a channel we need to be on."

The Wal-Mart Facebook group arrives a month after the roll-out of Wal-Mart's Site to Store programme, which lets customers order products on its website and have them shipped to a local Wal-Mart store for free.