Or in other words, you are making confident statements about Wal-Mart's pricing policy, but have no data to back those statements up with. Walmart has been a major player for at least 20 years now, and measuring the degree of monopoly power in different sectors of the economy is a thriving field of economic research -- contrary to your claim that "the goverment" doesn't research these things. If there is good data supporting or contradicting your claim, somebody has published it by now.
You're welcome to look for them in a Republican controlled government. The government took over a decade to hit Microsoft and another decade for it to start and pay off for the consumer. If you're shopping at Wal-Mart and are confident you are saving money and it's a great shopping experience, shop on. I was obviously making some supposition about their pricing strategy based on my own experience and don't find it a valuable use of my time to prove it out with "studies." Government studies like how many terrorists attacks in 2003? The proof of the pudding is in the shopping and I don't find WalMart at all a good use of leisure time spent on shopping errands. Put that together with their policies with their employees and I don't have a positive picture of the company.
You can find on the Internet the Rubbermaid controversy on cheaper look-alikes made for WalMart just as an example.
Love this WalMart cartoon (there are many):
Lightwizard wrote:You're welcome to look for them in a Republican controlled government.
lmao Did Walmart just come into existance in the last 3 years?? Your attempts to turn every single issue into some sort of political finger pointing is pretty weak.
Thomas wrote:Lightwizard wrote: Watch the prices go back up even differing from location to location. They still can't be successful with that strategy around here because of too much competition.
I'm wondering: Other things equal, how much do prices at Wal-Mart vary between places where they're facing competition places where they don't? And how much do they raise prices once the competition has gone bankrupt? The claim of predatory pricing followed by monopoly profits gets repeated so often that I'm sure someone has published a rigorous quantitative study on it. Can you point me to one?
Do some research on what is happening with WalMart in Canada, Thomas. It's fascinating.
ehBeth wrote:Do some research on what is happening with WalMart in Canada, Thomas. It's fascinating.
What fascinating things can I expect? Can you give me a little teaser or something?
No WalMart didn't just come into existance in the last three years. Get real. Their expansion began in the late 90's, too soon to really see what they were up to.
In our area small retail stores pay from $10.00 to $20.00 an hour.
Delete duplicate (something's astary in the server today).
So how did Wal-Mart find any employees in the first place? Why, in your judgment, didn't everybody just keep working for the small retail stores instead, given that you think they were obviously superior as employers?
They're turnover must be incredible 'cause everytime I've even ventured in it took me ten to fifteen minutes to find a "sales associate" and they had no idea where to direct me or directed me to the wrong area. Add up all the jobs in small business in our area and WalMart is a drop in the bucket. That may not be true in some small towns, of course. They keep employees because they consistantly have a sign up that are hiring.
People in retail that land a position in a small store at those better wages don't leave, so WalMart feeds on this leftover market. It's a safety net for those who likely work two or three jobs to make ends meet, that's agreed.
Lightwizard wrote:People in retail that land a position in a small store at those better wages don't leave, so WalMart feeds on this leftover market. It's a safety net for those who likely work two or three jobs to make ends meet, that's agreed.
Okay. And given that what you call "this leftover market" exists; given that there are people nobody wants to employ at higher wages than Wal-Mart's, what ought to be done about them in your opinion?
It could be that nature will it's course and if they continue to give poor (or literally no) service, charge high prices for cheap goods that are permeated with look alike products and eventually enough people will catch on to them and stop partronizing (literally, from this thread) their stores. But is that the answer? There's no way to force them to sharpen up their demographics or give fair value for the dollar (which, in the long run in their overall quality of goods, they do not) but if enough people accept this and with the law suits cropping up, perhaps they will decide to not take advantage of the minimum wage laws and actually pay a decent wage. Of course, that may mean the execs can't buy that extra mansion in the Bahamas, or the needless extra Rolls or another 100 fit. yacht to cover both oceans but isn't that just terrible? How they suffer.
I can't argue with that, because unlike you, I have no idea what "fair value for the dollar" and "a decent wage" is supposed to mean. I don't even know if these terms have any well-defined meaning beyond "whatever price Lightwizard wants to pay for the value" and "whatever wage Lightwizard wants employers to pay their employees".
I suspect that they don't.
Of course not, that's the mentality of the corporate meetings which decide these things. They only listen to themselves. They would raise wages and then complain they have to raise prices. The question is much would they really have to raise them and if one walked into the store and knew the employees were fairly paid and one could get some decent service, would one really balk at paying a small percentage more?
Their "falling prices" are for items they bought in quantity (again, usually cheap look-alikes) which don't bring in the volume of sales so they begin dropping the price. So the consumer is a guage of whether something is a viable product and a viable price which is the way it should be, of course. It also could mean the product sucks. It takes years for a retail store to do some unwise buying ending up shoveling it off onto Big Lots (who really operate not much different than WalMarts) or some other last chance outlet store. The Orange County swap meet (the largest on the West Coast and fun to shop through if it's not a really hot day) ends up with a lot of these products. If one is willing to take a day at the fair grounds and needs a bunch of stuff like underclothing, they are the cheapest for name brands. You'd still have to be aware of look-alikes there
There us nothing inharently wrong with this marketing but it does have a lot of pitfalls in it.
WalMart will no doubt survive and in some non-competitive areas they will do their best. I probably experience a lot of price wars with all the local competition except that it is a chore to park and safari through all these stores. The local Target which is just five minutes away is always active but I do use their pharmacy. Actually the best pharmicist I've ever run across.
Lightwizard wrote:Of course not, that's the mentality of the corporate meetings which decide these things. They only listen to themselves. They would raise wages and then complain they have to raise prices. The question is much would they really have to raise them and if one walked into the store and knew the employees were fairly paid and one could get some decent service, would one really balk at paying a small percentage more?
Not if your own account of things is correct. You said yourself that traditional businesses have tried this approach and ended up losing market share to Wal-Mart big time. But if you are right -- if Wal-Mart really delivers inferior quality for the money -- people will eventually figure this out, and the company will eventually shrink back to its appropriate size. Possibly all the way down to zero. Problem solved. Correct?
That's what happened to K Mart despite their marketing coup turned into sour pickles with Martha Stewart products. Gawd knows where they were made but being a designer myself I was appalled at the ugly 1960's colors she deemed "decorator colors." Color blind decorator colors, that is. Sears survived their problems, dropped their catalog and actually improved on the product lines they sold. They have managed to stay in the electronics and computer sales but they do order name brand products that are look-alike models made for Sears. That is not a practice exclusive to Sears, WalMart, or any chain store. It just puts more responsibility on the buyer to spend some time investigating. I can follow along with the theory of caveat emptor and the fact that regulations are not always the answer. It's if they outright lie to a consumer that a product is identical. Actually, in WalMart one can't normally find anyone to lie to you and if you asked them if a certain model is the same as those at another store they will invariably say it is or I don't know. They won't usually even know themselves that it is a look alike.
