This is one of the biggest problems I have with the Big Boxes. If I want something that’s a Today’s Big Seller, yeah, I can find it. And probably it will be at a low price, but of low quality and made by (essentially) slave labor. I’m not going to find Better quality, only Poor and sometimes Acceptable at most big boxes. If I want Last Year’s Big Seller, it’s probably gone. If I want Today’s merchandise, but it’s not something that the Big Box buyers think that will sell in massive quantities, I’m probably going to have to look for it online.
And I resent this. While I’m perfectly willing to buy Acceptable quality in a lot of goods, there are some goods that I’d prefer to buy in Good or Better quality. And I wish that I had a much larger selection of goods available in B&M stores, because in some cases it’s hard to tell whether or not a kitchen appliance is what I want.
Of course it is. But (to the best of my knowledge) Wal*Mart is the only major chain that bases its business model on the destruction of historic shopping areas and independent stores.
How does it help consumers when there’s a store in town with reasonable prices, WalMart comes in cheaper and kills the store, and then WalMart raises its prices back to what the old store was charging? Consumers end up with a smaller selection, locals lose their jobs, newspapers & radio stations lose an advertiser, and there’s an empty storefront downtown. Nobody wins except Bentonville – which is where the money ends up.
I’ve read three books on Wal*Mart’s business practices, and this was mentioned in all three. If you’d like, I’d be happy to post the names of the books when I get home to look them up.
ETA: It was also a theme in the video mentioned in the OP.
It doesn’t “end up” there. It’s then spent in other locations to build more buildings, improve roads (where the communities require it), and then paid as dividends to stock holders.
(Why don’t people understand what publicly traded corporations are any more?)
I also understand that my point of view is different than most Americans. I live in a small town, surrounded by other small towns. I live here because I like it here, and I go out of my way to support the local economy so that it will stay the wonderful place that it is. There are people who live here that never spend a dime in town. They’ll blow $20 on gas to drive to the nearest big town and save $10 on something.
When people who live here spend money at a local store, all of the salaries it pays are local. All of the real estate is local. Some of the products are local. If there are any managers or owners making big bucks, they’re spending those big bucks here.
Spend that money at Wal*Mart, and it’s covering a few local salaries, but the big bucks are going to the corporate folks in Bentonville. Virtually none of the products are local. Those new buildings you mention are going in somewhere else. The stock dividends are being paid to people somewhere else.
[moderating]
I would like to note for the record that this thread has departed from what GQ is supposed to be and wandered deeply into GD territory. I’m one of the reasons it did so. Bad moderator! Bad! Let’s get back on the GQ track, and if someone wishes to keep a Wal*Mart debate going, start a thread in GD and post a link to it here.
[moderating]
I do not think this is accurate. Walmart cannot raise its prices back to what the old store was charging unless it’s the price that other Walmarts are charging. Everything that Walmart sells is available at their website, with prices the same no matter where you live. They can’t charge more at the store than they do online, and the price is right there on the internet for everyone to see. Walmart can’t jack up the prices at just one particular store once they’ve put the local competition out of business.
You’re thinking about it backwards.
They’re not being accused of
showing up
discounting to substantially beneath fair market value (FMV) for a product
waiting for their competition to fail
raising prices to above FMV
They don’t generally raise prices above FMV. IME, if they do, it’s generally by no more than about 15%, which is pretty much margin of error on some products.
They’re being accused of:
showing up
discounting to substantially beneath fair market value (FMV) for a product
waiting for their competition to fail
raising prices to Fair Market Value
The difference is in the last step there.
Incidentally, their stores are NOT uniformly priced.
I used to participate in a message board that followed the prices of motor oil, among other things.
For the sake of discussion, assume that Wal-Mart does hurt the small business in a town. Why does that happen? It is because people choose to shop at Wal-Mart. Bad for the existing small business, good for the customers who now are going to Wal-Mart. I’m not sure why the existing small business has interests that trump the potential Wal-Mart customer, regardless of what Wal-Mart is doing?
It is easy to take a side in the corporate “golliath” versus the small business “david” but there is another large pool of stakeholders involved who want to make their choices with their money.
No necessarily true. There are plenty of “on-line only specials” or what-have-you. A friend of mine went to Best Buy once, and found what he was looking for priced at $50. He went to bestbuy.com on his smartphone and found in for $40. So he bought it on his smartphone, selected “in-store pickup,” walked forty feet, and saved ten bucks.
Prices on the online store don’t necessarily match those on the shelves.
The argument- not that I necessarily agree with it- is that it may be good in the short term to get a Walmart widget for a buck when you were previously paying $1.50-$2.25 before, but when the more expensive, local places go under, suddenly you’re stuck with exactly one source for widgets, and if they decide to stop carrying widgets, or they start carrying shittier widgets, well, you’re shit out of luck.
Is there an example you can point to, where Wal-Mart dropped the price on a certain item until a local business died, then raised the price of the item back up?
People make poor decisions every day. Some people might think that short term good is better than what might happen long term. I guess this is close to a hijack into a “nanny state” discussion.
As noted above, when the local independent store sells a widget, the owner/manager spends most of that money in the local area. But if the local Big Box store sells that widget, only part of it stays in the local area. Some of that money goes to corporate headquarters, which generally ISN’T in the local area.
As an example of big-box vs. small town, I recall a few years ago checking out furniture (admittedly not what WalMart specializes in). The small town store had a very few items, and “if you want to know more we can get you brochures too…”
Drive a few hours to the big city, and there are several mass retailers who have a huge selection and much better delivery options. Still, furniture decor is a very personal thing - like women’s wear, only you can’t buy multiple outfits. In the end we went to one of a half-dozen higher end specialty stores and bought something we really liked, paying substantially more than the standard mac-tac-on-pressboard furniture prices.
this is where mom-and-pop stores fail in small towns. While some may actually be good enough to be or transition to higher-end niche marketing, a small general merchandiser cannot compete on price or selection with a big box store.
Walmart does not seek to put the M&P or Main Street out of business. They locate on the outskirts because main street does not have the parking space or building space. They compete on price because a small M&P is too ineffcient in buying power, sales volume, or overhead to match a big store. People buy there because it’s a deal.
They are called box stores as much for the boxes they sell as for the shape of the store. If what you sell is in a box and requires no expertise, and everyone has the same box, then all you can compete on is price. Car dealers could at least talk about the service they offer. Tailors could be knowledgeable about cut and material. Bakers could whip up tasty creations, if someone cared to pay the premium for handmade. However many items - books, kitchen appliances, jeans and running shoes - come off an assembly line and are the same at every store. Why would anyone pay 20% or 50% more?
Walmart isn’t evil or setting out to destroy America or small towns; they are just very good in exploiting the business climate that exists today.
I go to an independent comic book/gaming shop because the guy there knows me, knows my tastes, and can recommend something that I’ll like with about a 95% accuracy rate. I used to go to an independent used book store because the manager also knew me and my tastes and could recommend stuff to me. That store has now closed. Half Price books is a great used book store…but I don’t have any sort of relationship with any of the workers there. Well, not since my daughter quit working there.
While the books are the same at all the book shops, the people working there have various degrees of knowledge both about the books and the customers. I go to the independents because they know what I liked in the past, and what I’m likely to enjoy. Yeah, I’ll pay a bit more, but I’m HAPPIER with my experience.
Walmart can also enrich a community and not drive competitors out of business. In Canada, a lot of the initial Walmart locations were former Woolworth locations (they bought Woolworth’s out). Most of the previous staff was kept. They employ many seniors who could not otherwise get a part time job because of their age (and no, they aren’t stocking heavy junk in the middle of the night, they are doing customer service usually). Plus the Walmart in the nearest city for the reserves up north in Saskatchewan makes an absolute killing. Every time you go there you see huge pickup trucks stocking up on everything. But Walmart doesn’t do bulk goods, so they also shop at the bulk retailers, spreading cash around. I’m pretty sure many of the mom-and-pop shops couldn’t stock enough goods to provide for that demographic.
And I joked about this in another thread - once Walmart leaves a mall to build its own store, a Zellers will inevitably move in and become the new anchor tenant.
