[Moderating]
ShemanAter, posts like this contribute nothing to the thread. We really don’t care about your personal opinions in GQ. Let’s refrain from such comments in the future.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
You hit the nail on the head with clothes. I also don’t buy clothes in most Wal-Mart competitors, either, because everyone seems to be targeting the bottom of the barrel when it comes to apparel. The other items you mention – pet food, toiletries, pharmacy stuff – falls under the category of “groceries” in my mind. I’m not going to make a special trip for them. Pet food, specifically, I won’t buy in any grocery store since having done a lot of research during the last salmonella scare. I’ve settled on one brand that I can only get in smaller stores (yes, that is worth a separate trip). DVD’s and batteries I don’t buy. I can’t think of a single thing that I own that uses batteries. Ah, remote controls. I get those at Sam’s (and yes, I’m aware they’re part of the same company). Speaking of Sam’s, they also have the absolute best quality beef there! It’s not the same stuff they sell at Wal-Mart. Now that leaves electronics, furniture, household goods, and so on. I think Exapno Mapcase really hit the nail on the head:
Well, for example you can get Levi’s jeans – the non-cheap, non-“signature” version – at higher-end stores. Their crotches don’t rip out. You can get Wusthof knives at Macy’s. You can get the good Toro stuff at local power equipment dealers.
Now bear in mind that the Wal-Martization of this country doesn’t merely apply to Wal-Mart. There are things that Home Depot sells that I won’t touch. There are things in my preferred megamart – Meijer in my case – that I won’t touch.
For the vast majority of things in this world, it’s better to pay more for quality, and in many cases, it’s not even significantly more.
Wal-Mart is well known for getting poorer-quality versions of brand name products. Because they push suppliers to keep lowering prices, they lower standards. As such, you’d better make damn sure that the DVD player you’re picking up has the exact same model number as the one you’re comparing it to.
Here’s one article that discusses this issue:
There was nothing in that article that suggested that name brands are substituting poorer quality materials just for Wal-Mart. The article dealt with socks (it did say that some ‘name brand’ socks looked worse than other socks from the same manufacturer, but that doesn’t tell us much, since lots of manufacturers have low-end lines as well. What he doesn’t say was whether it was marked as such), and a cassette player that he specifically said was NOT a name brand.
This is not a Wal-mart thing. Our city is littered with ‘liquidation’ stores, discount stores, and other locations were truly execrable crap can be purchased for amazingly low amounts of money. Wal-Mart does this too. But so does Canadian Tire, Costco, Zellers, Home Depot, and just about every store that carries a wide range of products. The lesson is not that Wal-Mart is bad, but that you get what you pay for.
As for whether quality represents a rip-off, or whether it’s just another choice like buying a Chevy instead of a Mercedes is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes I think that the people who complain about the ‘junk’ and say it’s not worth the low price really don’t understand what it means to be really, really poor. Sure, that cassette player he bought for $9.99 isn’t going to be as good as his $79 Sony. Who in their right mind would expect it to be? What he doesn’t say, however, is that for some people, the difference between $9.99 and $79 is the difference between having some kind of cassette player and not having one at all.
You need to put yourself in the head of someone who is raising two children and has a total entertainment budget of $100/mo or so. Suddenly, those $2 tradeoffs start to look pretty good. Wearing the $1 socks instead of the $3 socks means being able to rent a movie with the kids one night, or it means both kids can get new socks and get rid of the ones full of holes they’ve been wearing.
There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s an optimum price to performance ratio on most goods that’s quite a bit higher than the the cheapest goods will allow - that is, if you have the money, buy the better stuff because in the long run it’s worth it.
That’s little comfort for those people who just don’t have the option of buying the better stuff anyway. For them, it’s low-quality stuff or nothing at all.
I don’t think anyone would argue that Walmart is selling the BMW model. I think they tend to sell a range of products from the Yugo to the Pontiac.
Sam Stone is dead-on, in that people’s utility gains might be different depending upon income and needs, etc. Balthizar, Im sure that you have a different utility curve than I do. I wouldn’t get much benefit out of Snap-on tools as opposed to Craftsman, whereas you might. But there’s no reason why Craftsman tools shouldn’t be sold or be considered bad. And if I can get Craftsman tools for 5% off, that’s a good thing. Furthermore, just because there are Star tools (really cheap Chinese stamped wrenches) for sale at Wal-Mart doesn’t mean that Craftsman tools sold there are low quality as well. (I’m aware that Wal-Mart doesn’t sell Craftsman tools, it’s just an analogy.)
Wal-Mart sells lower quality products, but they still sell a range. For example, a Linksys router (wrt54g). These are ubiquitous, and popular with hobbyists. The ones sold at Wal-Mart are the exact same ones as sold at Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, etc. However, Wal-mart usually has them for a few dollars less than the other stores.
While it is possible to save a lot of money by purchasing only the lowest quality, cheapest brand sold (this would be easier at a store like Dollar General), the savings Wal-Mart offers, for me, are the small savings on fungible items. These savings add up over an entire grocery trip. In essence, I am getting the same exact quality of good that I would otherwise purchase elsewhere at a 5% discount or so. That’s different than intentionally trading off quality for price.
I think there is a perception that Wal-Mart ONLY sells the very lowest-end goods and that the savings is directly proportional to the quality of the merchandise, but the real story is a little more complicated and some of it has to do with purchasing power and efficiency.
http://www.cio.com/article/31948/Supply_Chain_Partnerships_How_Levi_s_Got_Its_Jeans_into_Wal_Mart
That’s how it works, multiplied by thousands.
Yes, and I’ve already stipulated that their clothing lines are of a lower quality, which is why they cost about 50% less. It was also mentioned in the big article about Vlassic pickles. Note that the Wal-Mart jeans are branded differently (Signature line) than regular Levis.
That doesn’t address the smaller consistent savings that I am talking about in my post. The difference is that I can knowingly shop for quality differences, which is different than getting what I believe is the SAME product but is actually lower quality - such as buying a bag of Doritos which have 50% less flavoring.
As I already said, Wal-Mart does sell some identical products at a lower price. And as I and everybody have said, so what? If you can identify those products and buy only them at Wal-Mart go right ahead and count your pennies.
But Wal-Mart cannot survive on those sales. What percent of Wal-Mart’s 100,000 items are identical brand names? The remaining large percentage will be brand name products specially made for them or no-name products specially made for them. They will, in general, be of lower quality because price and quality do correlate. That’s what keeps Target and Kohl’s and the other stores in business. People perceive them to have, IMO correctly, a sufficient number of higher quality products than Wal-Mart.
If this isn’t your perception, then shop there happily. I don’t care.
I’m just telling you that in the objective opinion of everybody who writes about the world of business and in the inescapable logic of pricing, it’s true.
Except that everything cited so far says the opposite, that Wal-Mart’s success is due to its massive purchasing power and ability to dictate terms to suppliers. So I guess I am asking you for a cite, because your claims run directly counter to my experience.
(Also, it’s not inescapable logic that quality is the only, or even largest, factor in price until every retailer and supplier operate at the same level of efficiency.)
In this article from the New York Times, a Sony marketing VP describes the low-end line they developed for big-box stores such as Wal-Mart, “To attract the price-conscious, Sony introduced its ‘M’ line of televisions, designed for big box stores that ‘want to buy Sony without all the bells and whistles,’ Mr. [Randy] Waynick said. To cut costs, the company uses 720p resolution, rather than 1080p, and less sophisticated color processing, offering a lower contrast ratio than in its more expensive sets.”
And thus for the great majority of shoppers, the Sony name suddenly means less. Kind of like purchasing so-called “John Deere” in Home Depot. Ever wonder why Apple doesn’t sell in Wal-Mart? Hmmm… actually they do. I wonder what the deal is? The price differences are negligible: $299 vs $297. WTF?
That’s neither “getting ripped off” nor is it “price gouging”. They’re not somehow charging anyone an unfair price for anything, just more than their competition.
People assume that because Wal-Mart used to use that “Lowest Prices” ad campaign, that they still do, and don’t necessarily bother to check. Caveat Emptor. Wal Mart’s doing nothing wrong- it’s just that some proportion of their clientele are either stupid or lazy.
I live about 1/3 of a mile from a new Wal-Mart, and about a mile and a half from a Kroger, and they’re both very competitive- overall, you’re not talking much difference in an average grocery basket worth.
Sony’s name meant a lot less to me after they put spyware on their CDs and DVDs. Note that the M-line was sold to more than just Wal-Mart.