I can’t be the only person who shops before work or during lunch. I’m usually getting something to eat, but also need razors, or a paint brush…something on the other side of the store. It makes no sense to drive a big cart all around and takes twice as long. I can run the quarter mile it takes to get my things much better with a hand held basket.
The Walmart near us only sometimes has hand baskets… We always look for them, but if there are any at all there’s only 1. (Normally there are none)
I find it extraordinarily annoying. It’s already like trying to drive in Chicago at rush hour in there and it doesn’t help when everyone has a humungous cart with nothing but a single box of tissues in it blocking all of the rows.
Last night we went into a Wal-Mart for a few things and noticed that there weren’t any hand baskets. My wife, who carries a purse, grabbed a cart so she could put her purse in it even though we could have probably done without.
Maybe strongly encouraging someone to set down their burden, be it a purse, child, or diaper bag will make them more likely to relax and shop an extra few minutes.
I work in retail, so I can say with confidence the goal is to increase what they call “basket size” - i.e. the amount of stuff you purchase. If you run a store where people often come in for one or two things (like for example a Walgreens), you offer them a basket and hopefully they’ll now buy three or four items that they can now carry easily. If they usually buy only what will fit in the basket, make them use a shopping cart that will hold more.
There’s also the added advantage of not having to acquire, maintain, store, and display the baskets (which admittedly might be offset by the need for more carts).
I would think Walmart would not want to piss me off first thing as I walk in the store. Like other’s have said, ALL other stores have them…we’re conditioned to expect them when we walk in the store. But no, not Walmart, where we’re now being condtioned to push a wheeled cart around so we can hopefully purchase more than we need. They should just put up a sign as you walk in: “No handbaskets available–use your arms to carry things, or a shopping cart so you’ll buy more!”
I am cynical enough to believe that it is to encourage buying more. In one way it makes sense. But it sounds like a case of confusing correlation with cause and effect. A study that says people with wheeled carts buy more is like a study that concludes that buying bigger shoes causes your feet to grow more.
And since hand held baskets are part of the “big box” shopping experience…I wonder if this works for Walmart, if they see an increase in purchases or per shopper purchase increase (however they measure it)…will all the box retailers do away with their hand held baskets. Walmart is the retail leader/trendsetter so I’m thinking hand baskets might be going the way of the buggy whip.
?
Less convenient? They are already at max level for “less convenient.” The only way to be come less convenient is for them to wait until I have made my purchases and then actually whack me in the balls with a baseball bat on the way out the door and then take the stuff I bought from me. At no time in the last 20 years has going to Wal-Mart been any less painful than a sriracha enema.
Why did they get rid of hand baskets? You are more likely to put more stuff in a big cart. Plus they are Wally world so f you.
Wait, people steal those hand-held baskets? Why? I mean, I’m perfectly willing to buy one if it would be useful around the house but I can’t imagine what you’d use them for.
Carry stuff around the house? Carry your groceries home? People that don’t have cars will often steal carts and either wheel them home or to the bus stop, so I can see stealing a handbasket if you only have a few items.
They have access to a lot of data that you and I do not. I’d imagine they piloted removing handbaskets at a few stores and compared the average shopper’s purchase size in relation to other stores at a similar time last year, and looked to see if it generally went up or went down. If it went down, then they wouldn’t have removed them.
Since they have done that, I can only assume that overall, it went up. I’m certain that, yes, some shoppers bought less because they ended up just carrying the one item they came for and didn’t get any impulse items. But they were probably outweighed by those that grabbed a cart and filled it.
It’s a common fallacy to believe that if a big corporation does something, it must be reasonable. Even if nobody can figure out any good reason for what they’re doing.
Why is it impossible to believe that corporations sometimes just make dumb decisions?
I don’t think it would take a lot of customer tracking to figure the economics of no baskets. The experiment is easy. Take two stores in Des Moines, IA, for instance, both having carts and baskets, compare the average number of items bought and average customer total over one week. Remove the baskets and do the same calculations the next week. Do baskets affect (adversely) the number or value of purchases? Yes, it would be informative to have a more complex overview about what is purchased, but it’s not exactly rocket science. I have an aunt who has worked in the worker’s insurance department at Walmart central for more than 40 years- and the bottom line is always value at Walmart and they wouldn’t do a complicated analysis if there was a simpler and cheaper way to do it. That is a top to bottom instituted policy.
I think it would be MUCH easier to just carry your few items in a bag. The stealing excuse is BS IMHO. Sure, people leave the store with wheeled carts, but hand baskets? Never seen that.
Next thing you know they’ll have have “double-wide” shopping carts.
If you want to be a smartass about it, go to the container section of walmart, get a basket with handles or small trashcan, shop with it, take it to checkout, and tell the cashier you’ve decided you don’t want the basket. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
If you don’t like being “forced” to use a cart, you can always bring your own shopping basket or bag with you. I keep a few reusable cloth shopping bags in my car, so I’d just do that. But generally speaking, I only go shopping at a big-box store when I need a shitload of stuff, so I’d be getting the cart anyway. If I just need to pick up a couple things on my way home, I go to a drug store–they’re more compact (if a little more expensive), I can park right outside the door, and checkout is much faster.
Sure it does, if you’re more likely to throw extra stuff in the cart, versus not getting those items because you’d have to carry them.
As long as their attitude is “Sorry, we’re out of hand baskets” I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, which is grab some of their shopping bags to go shopping.
At some point though, they’re going to have to admit, “sorry we want you to shop with a shopping cart only, and we will never have those hand baskets back”.
I prefer the handheld baskets because I have never been in a Walmart that is designed to allow the navigation of shopping carts. So I only go there when I can fit a few items in a basket. It is impossible to push a cart around the place because of all the people using scooters who wouldn’t need scooters if they didn’t use scooters, the one front wheel that never works right, and the people who shop at least 4 wide and 4 deep in groups and clog up the aisles, among other things.
Mine stopped having baskets also. I usually make a basket out of a convenient item or borrow a Rubbermaid container or something and leave it at the checkout.
I worked at a Wal-Mart in Baltimore for about a year two years ago. People would routinely steal them. I’ve seen security tapes of it occurring multiple times; management showed us this in order to drive home how we should be on the look out for it. Customers would come to the speedy checkout, shove their bags into the basket, walk out to their car and put the basket into their car. There was one time we literally ordered a hundred new baskets and they were gone within two weeks.
So…I don’t know how much ‘shopping behavior’ actually factors into it.
It was actually pretty hilarious when people would come in bitching about the lack of baskets, as if it’s their god given right to have a shopping basket. In fact, I could go on a whole tirade about the demographic of people who shop at Wal-Mart, but I’ll save that for another thread. I don’t want to derail this thread with a rant about people who use the wrong coupons and then bitch at the cashier for not accepting them.