According to this New York Times article published today, Wal-Mart will henceforth not sell the aformentioned magazines. Since you may need to register to read the article, allow me to quote some relevant excerpts:
Words almost fucking fail me! I didn’t start this thread do debate whether those magazines are appropriate, because I don’t think I have that right. But apparently Wal-Mart does! I am just so tired with reading about them connected to this type of bullshit. I already never go there to buy CDs. And their magazine rack was no great shakes already, since they’ve pared it down to stuff that nobody smarter than a teenager wants to read. Apparently, they think their entire customer base lives in South Carolina.
Geez. I’m just so annoyed I can’t even type anything good right now.
My point was that this is ultimately a stupid thing to do because people want to buy the stuff they’re not selling. I don’t buy CDs at Wal-Mart now because I don’t want some altered piece of crap designed for an 8-year-old. I actually have bought a few of the magazines mentioned in the OP, But I won’t even bother going to the mag rack there now, since they were pretty much the only things Wal-Mart carried I was still interested. (Apparently, nobody in BFE, where most Wal-Marts are located, wants to buy The Economist or the Wall Street Journal, so they don’t stock those either.)
A key part of running any business is listening to what the customer wants. Wal-Mart apparently thinks some customers are worth listening to, and others aren’t. That makes me very uncomfortable. I’m should be as important as every other customer because we’re all spending the same money. But no. A certain group, which doesn’t own the store, is offended that a certain product is even on the shelves, so therefore, I have to go elsewhere to buy it. Thanks Wal-Mart. Maybe I’ll buy everything else I need at that other store, too.
Oh-well exactly, I agree with you there. Yeah, you should listen to your customers. I can understand, though, not wanting to sell something. I know of a local store that was later closed that decided to stop selling tabloids after the death of Princess Di. shrugs They did enough business in other things, though, that it really wouldn’t matter. Wal-Mart doesn’t HAVE to sell EVERYTHING.
However, Wal-Mart sucks, we all know that. But people will keep going there. I worked at Kmart for four years-the place was going to hell in a handbasket, the higher ups were totally incompetant, yet they still did a good business.
Every day I just hear a few more things about Walmart that make me never want to patronize them again. They treat their workers terribly, the banning of videos and magazines, not to mention a hideous over use of the ultimate 80s color “Royal Blue”.
Yes, it sucks when it is hard to find want you want to buy but I guess Walmart decided that the possible loss of business by you and others that feel the same way is less than the possible loss of business by those offended by Maxim etal.
When I need to go buy an issue of Penthouse, a rifle, and some vodka, I can’t go to Walmart. I’ll live.
Well, I would dispute your examples. K-Mart was manifestly not doing a good business, at least on the national level, because they went bankrupt! And the store you mentioned stopped selling tabloids and is now closed. Obviously, its entire business was not tabloids, but I know from my time in journalism that those publications outsell almost every other newspaper. Getting rid of them probably disappointed many people who formerly bought them at that store. They then went elsewhere to buy their tabloids, and possibly everything else they needed that they formerly bought at the other store.
And in a greater sense, that’s what this is all about. People go to a store to buy general things (like food, or a plastic bucket) and then they go to buy specific things, like a certain magazine, toy, or CD. You can buy the general things at any one of a number of stores: Target, Wal-Mart, Meijer, Giant, etc. But if I know I can’t buy the specific things I usually want at a certain one of these places, well, then I just have no reason to shop there at all.
Wal-Mart is essentially undercutting its own business. They can get away with it for now, because as that article pointed out in a section I didn’t quote, in many rural areas they are really the only store around.
But the history of business clearly shows that cutting the number of products you sell is not a way to get ahead in retail. You merely make it easier for competitors who are willing to sell those products to get a foot into the door.
The thing is, Wal-Mart dosn’t have to listen to what the customer wants. They are big enough, with enough buying power, that they can sell most crap cheaper than any local store. They move in, steal enough customers from other store so that they are forced to close. By that time the customers are euchred, there is no other place to shop.
They probably weren’t listed because you can’t buy a gun through a website. Every Wal-Mart I’ve ever been in sold rifles and shotguns. At a good price, too. I bought my first .22 and first varmint rifle (a bolt-action .243) there.
I have often thought a great idea for a chain store would be some place that sold guns, porn, and tobacco, all in the same place. Maybe booze too, but I’m not sure that’s even legal.
If there is any group that I utterly despise, it’s goddman do-gooders who impose their views on everyone else, whether it’s prudish Christians who think nudity is evil (which makes me wonder why they worship the being that supposedly created nudity in the first place) or liberals who want to ban “Huckleberry
Finn” because the word “nigger” is used.
On the other hand, since Wal-Mart markets itself to the uneducated yokels who inhabit small towns in the South and Midwest, you can’t blame it too harshly for acceding to the wishes of its customer base.
I guess the skin on the cover of Maxim was just too jarring when placed next to all the uplifting spiritual crap that is infesting Wal-Mart and growing at alarming rates.
Wal-mart sucks! They’re terrible! And now they’re doing this lame-brained thing that’s gonna cost them business, and I’m upset about it!
Huh?
I think this is a fantastic move on Wal-Mart. I just wish they’d quit selling medicine, bowing to pressure from the Christian Scientists, and would quit selling makeup, bowing to pressure from Jehovah’s Witnesses, and would quit selling electronic entertainment, bowing to pressure from the Amish.
(the Amish as a strident pressure group. Tee hee!)
And while they’re at it, I’ll applaud once they bow to pressure from animal-rights folks and quit selling animal-derived products, and when they bow to pressure from Dworkinites and quit selling Cosmopolitan, and bow to pressure from anti-tobacco groups and quit selling cigarettes.
Wal-mart sucks! They’re terrible! And now they’re doing this lame-brained thing that’s gonna cost them business! Woo hoo!
Wow, you contradict yourself in the span of two sentences. Wal-Mart does listen to their customers. What their customers want is lots of stuff sold at the absolute lowest price possible, even at the expense of good service and knowledgeable employees. It is listening to this deafening message from their customers that allowed them to become “big enough” to have enough “buying power” to undecut the competition. **
I had no idea that customers “belonged” to particular retail establishments, and that wooing those customers away amounted to theft. Please do tell me which retailer my business “belongs” to – I wouldn’t want to be an accessory to a crime by shopping around.
