Walmart Takes on Amazon for Web Dominance

[kjk]

I've never even seen a Walmart around here..are they like Target?

[PennyPie]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
Has anyone ever found a good book or magazine in the book section of a physical Wal-Mart? Their offerings are bland exponentiated.

IMHO....They're offering merchandise to the lowest common denominator. So you're likely to only see the latest general interest titles. Maybe also titles based on the demographics of the locale.

[Sporadic]

WalMart.com sucks anyways.

Their shipping is slow and their site-to-store is even slower. It took a week and a half for the store to get my package and even the pickup was a hassle (since it doesn't have it's own department and the electronics people run it for some reason instead of returns/customer service at the front of the store)

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore

Don't do it 'just because.' Do it to keep wealth within your local community

That is protectionism on a small parochial scale. Of course you can "keep the wealth locally", but that means there's so much less wealth available to begin with, whether to keep or to spread, because of inefficiency. If they can't compete fairly, they deserve to disappear.

[Spoon Man]

Originally Posted by meraxes

That is protectionism on a small parochial scale. Of course you can "keep the wealth locally", but that means there's so much less wealth available to begin with, whether to keep or to spread, because of inefficiency. If they can't compete fairly, they deserve to disappear.

I'm sorry, but since when have you been in a competition that you truly wanted to win? No one wants a fair fight but the people that would automatically lose in the fight if they jumped in. The fact is that wal-mart is competing on an international level right now, getting things from a third world country on a price level that is lower than a mom-and-pop could because they can't order in quantities nearly as vast as Wal-mart's. As such Wal-mart is offering things at a lower price that families tend to jump at because it saves them money as well.

Wal-mart may or may not be responsible for the death of small businesses, however I believe (and this is a statement of personal belief, nothing that I can back with hard evidence or fact) that people in these cities will adapt. It may take a generation or two but people are inherently hard to kill off and will come up with something that will allow them to survive.

I personally don't like wal-mart because I've gotten products from them that tend to be of a lesser quality than I could get elsewhere, and I've gotten worse customer service as well.

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by Spoon Man

The fact is that wal-mart is competing on an international level right now, getting things from a third world country on a price level that is lower than a mom-and-pop could because they can't order in quantities nearly as vast as Wal-mart's.

Do you think there's anything wrong with that?

[calvin-c]

I'll note a few things that I've observed mostly because I live in an isolated city. Reasonable population (about 40,000) but no road access. I've lived here for 30 years now, from the time when people who flew to Anchorage would bring back a load of Big Mac's for their friends.

Today, there's not only a MacDonald's but there's a Fred Meyer, a Walmart, and-opened two years ago-a Home Depot. This has, as others have noted, lowered prices & profits for the 'old-time' businesses. Few of them have actually gone under, but I know these people & know that their profits have decreased. And they're not hurting. Their profits have decreased from 'make me rich' to 'give me a fair living'. Jobs have definitely increased. And the biggest impact? People no longer fly to Seattle & Anchorage for 'shopping weekends'.

Believe me, people didn't do that because it was cheaper. Yes, the cost of goods was cheaper, but not when you included the cost of the flight plus the hotel stay. So, what's most changed by chain stores coming in is local selection. Few people objected to paying higher prices in the local stores-what we objected to was being unable to find what we wanted. And the local businesses weren't interested in helping-they had, at that time, a captive audience.

When the chains came in they put on a big push to 'be loyal to locals'. My response, along with others, was "where was the loyalty to us?" Local businesses tend to believe in 'one-way' loyalty. Personally, I'd rather deal with a business that doesn't believe in loyalty at all. Except when the owners are friends. But even for friends, loyalty, to me, means I'll give them my time to help them out. Not that I'll give them my money.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by kjk

I've never even seen a Walmart around here..are they like Target?

where's around here? Walmart is more like a K-mart supercenter but yes, a Target is somewhat similar. Walmart is known to exercise their size to pressure special prices from vendors which allows them to cut prices to the consumer. Some cities specifically won't let them in town due to the devastation of local business, while they would allow Target or K-mart.

Dale

[Spectrum]

Go WALMART Go!!

What is this fascination with small retailers who are a bunch of whiners?

With ebooks and eReader I don't go to any brick and mortar stores.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Spoon Man

I personally don't like wal-mart because I've gotten products from them that tend to be of a lesser quality than I could get elsewhere, and I've gotten worse customer service as well.

And their dominance is societal. When they tried the same in UK with ASDA, they lost market share (mostly to Tescos) and had to quickly reverse course and put the quality (and prices) back up again. They've recovered some of the lost ground...

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Some cities specifically won't let them in town due to the devastation of local business...

I.e some cities tell their residents, "we aren't going to allow you to decide where you want to shop, because you're stupid and need decisions to be made for you. Rather than be able to get a better deal from Walmart and use the savings to go on holiday, we want you to have no choice but to go to the local rip-off shop, which offers half the selection at twice the price."

[Kali Yuga]

I concur with meraxes; protectionism -- whether on a national or local level -- does not work. If the small shop can't offer something (convenience, quality, service, atmosphere etc) that the national chain does not, then no amount of encouragement or pleading to "buy local" will work. And if you were running a small business, do you really want your customer base to be built on pity and parochialism?

I.e. if you're going to zap Walmart, it doesn't make much sense to decry the fact that they are a large, efficient, national chain. I'm reasonably certain there are other grounds to criticize them.

In this context, they offer a poor selection and have minimal expertise in selling books, and the price war is a PR stunt that isn't likely to do much except squeeze everyone's margins a little bit. Amazon's balance sheet is, afaik, strong enough that they may not like it but can definitely survive it. Plus, a good piece of Amazon's business is supposedly in the "long tail," not a field in which Walmart has a reputation (or is likely to develop any time soon). So I doubt there will be much in the way of long-term effects from this little price war.

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by kjk

I've never even seen a Walmart around here..are they like Target?

Not even close. The merchandise is all cramed together, and all they offer is low price. They used to advertise made in America, but they dropped that. No unique design like Target, and a different caliber of employees. If you want to know what working at Walmart is like, read Nickle and Dimed. It was horrible.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Some cities specifically won't let them in town due to the devastation of local business, while they would allow Target or K-mart.

Where? AFAIK that would be illegal anywhere in the US. As stated, at least. There are many ways to accomplish the same end, but they can't do it openly *because it's Walmart*. The most common way (IIRC) is for cities to rezone (or refuse to rezone) the location where Walmart wants to put their store. But if they do that specifically because it's Walmart it won't hold up in court. They need some other reason, such as traffic density (i.e. they wouldn't let a Target or KMart open a store in that location either).

Other methods that I think I remember being used were opinion polls (Walmart would be stupid to open a store in a town that voted 80% against them) and tax breaks. (With tax breaks, it's a bit easier to choose which companies you give the tax breaks to. But you still need to be careful not to deny it "just because it's Walmart".)

One way that could be done, although I don't remember it ever happening, is to require all businesses (or all businesses in a certain category) to adhere to certain policies. For instance, all businesses with more than 50 employees might be required to provide health insurance. For years Walmart was notorious for not providing health insurance although I believe they now do so. (That's not a knock against Walmart, BTW, those mom-and-pop businesses people admire so much usually didn't provide HI either.)

Mainly, the thing to remember is that it's easy for a city to block the opening of just about any chain store, but it's quite a bit more difficult for them to block the opening of the store for only one chain. No matter how unpopular they are. (And Walmart is, believe it or not, very popular. You get the opposite impression mainly because it's opponents are so vocal. Funded by the mom-and-pop businesses, of course.)

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

I concur with meraxes; protectionism -- whether on a national or local level -- does not work. If the small shop can't offer something (convenience, quality, service, atmosphere etc) that the national chain does not, then no amount of encouragement or pleading to "buy local" will work. And if you were running a small business, do you really want your customer base to be built on pity and parochialism?

I.e. if you're going to zap Walmart, it doesn't make much sense to decry the fact that they are a large, efficient, national chain. I'm reasonably certain there are other grounds to criticize them.

I agree. I hate Wal-mart and refuse to shop there and just pay more at places like Target etc. for the same stuff as Wal-marts are just terrible shopping experiences.

But I don't feel that bad for the small shops that go under either. Just the nature of the free market. Off goods and services that make people want to come to your shop over chain places, or you have no purpose. Service is really key. I'll pay more for things from places with good service.

Of course, the problem is many don't have the budgets to do that and have to shop where ever is cheapest, even if they hate the experience in those stores.