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Wal-Mart Enters NetFlix's Business
wcbrown writes "AP reports that Wal-Mart is entering into the online DVD rental arena, currently dominated by Netflix. Wal-Mart is starting out with 13,000 titles, six distribution centers, and competitive pricing. With a seriously tremendous infrastructure and expansive will, Wal-Mart stands poised to overtake Netflix. To say the least, that's not going to be good for business."
OMFG have you seen the Halo 2 trailer it's like slow and it's telling you all the stuff you did in the first one then the music kicks in and and the chief comes out and gets a gun the earf is on fire and chief is like fuck this im jumping and HE JUMPS PUT OF TEH SPACESHIP with angels singing and he lands on the bad guys and that annoying ai lady is like GO GET EM TIGER! WILDCAT IS ON TEH SPOKE!!!~`1 and theres less polys but rawkin bumb mappings you can view this on a special MICROSOFT xbox disk that comes with EB games store.
DAILY REMINDER: Hillary Clinton doesn't just stand by...she actively works to offshore American High-Tech!
Two innocent bystanders dead in Gaza from an That fat slob has murdered more Hamas heroes. Today six more brave fighters slaughtered by US equipment paid for by the US taxpayers.
When will the international community rise up against the filthy country of Israel and drive those criminal scum into the sea? That terrorist Sharon in up to his neck with the blood of innocents he has killed. How much longer can we sit by and watch these Jewish outrages occur??
so, when they have mod points, they sit there
reloading the front page repeatedly and whenever a new topic comes up, load points onto whatever the first meaningful comment is.
they have conflicts: want to play by the rules ("mod up, not down!"), they want their moderation to matter, they don't want their moderation points to expire, but the don't actually want to moderate.
you are obivioulsy much to self important to worry about anyone outside of your preception of 'middle of the road'
In most small towns that a Wal-Mart is dropped on, the vibrant downtown area dries up and becomes a shell of its former self with only a few niche shops and perhaps one or two restaurants that typically go out of business as well, since nobody has money to buy from them anymore.
There are some EXTREMELY rare cases where that is not the case, but that is typically due to other mitigating factors that simply aren't available in most small towns. Things like Colleges and Art Academies or tourist attractions.
If you drove to 200 or so small towns that Wal-Mart moved into, check the City Records one to two years before Wal-Mart moved in to see how many businesses were registered and paying taxes and then look at the same records one, two, three and five years later. Most ALL of the time you see the number of businesses drop away.
This erodes the tax base since many of those business owners will either lose everything and become a VERY underpaid Wal-Mart employee or will pack up and skip town.
All in all the net effect is that many community leaders, that may have sponsored local events, as many small town shopkeepers and business associations do, will disappear. This causes an abrupt ending to many local events and eventually destroys the heart and the soul of those small towns.
Wal-Mart is a community destroying corporate monster that knows no bounds, sells cheap merchandise from overseas manufacturers, denigrates its employees and does what it can to destroy ALL competition. (Like it is attempting to do with Meijer's here in Michigan. I know that because I had overheard a Wal-Mart location scout chatting away on his cell phone regarding a new Meijer's store.)
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Customers Sometimes Benefit
When Airlines Play 'Monopoly'
By SCOTT MCCARTNEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
A recent trip on the Atlanta-Los Angeles route reminded me of my old "Monopoly" playing days.
Remember "Monopoly"? If someone had a monopoly on say, Boardwalk and Park Place, you'd try like crazy to roll the dice to avoid landing there, lest you had to pay double rent or even more.
Now think about airline monopolies. When one carrier offers the only non-stop service between two cities, and charges double the fare or more, it turns out that many travelers go to great lengths to avoid landing in that trap. That's how you play the game.
This summer, Atlanta-Los Angeles is perhaps the most interesting airline battleground in the country. Delta Air Lines basically has had a monopoly there for years. The last "competition" on that route was from UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, and United abandoned non-stop service before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
But ATL-LAX is a Delta monopoly no more. When Delta announced it would launch "Song," it's airline-within-an-airline, at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, current JFK resident JetBlue Airways Corp. took the move personally. JetBlue struck back in part by announcing it would fly three times a day from Long Beach, Calif., where it is establishing a West Coast hub, to Atlanta. With the Atlanta-Los Angeles market, JetBlue saw opportunity -- both to grow and to hurt Delta.
Not to be outdone, the second-biggest airline in Atlanta, AirTran Airways announced that it would enter the Atlanta-Los Angeles market with twice-daily service on Airbus A320s leased from Ryan International.
With five new daily flights on low-cost carriers in the market, Delta then announced that it would add five new Atlanta-Los Angeles flights a day of its own, and one additional Atlanta-Ontario, Calif., flight. The airline also began offering triple frequent-flier miles to Atlanta-Los Angeles customers, in an effort to meet "customer demand."
Suddenly, the Atlanta-Los Angeles market has exploded from eight Delta non-stops a day to 19 non-stops a day from Atlanta to the five Los Angeles basin airports. One-way fares have gone from as high as Delta's $1,000 gotcha business-travel fare to readily available $114 and $154 one-way fares on the same airline.
That's how airlines play Monopoly, of course. When a new entrant comes into a market, incumbent airlines slash fares and flood the market with seats. Customers stick with the incumbent, enjoy the new low prices, and the discount carrier that caused the feast ends up starved. The Justice Department has looked at this many times and even sued AMR Corp.'s American Airlines for "predatory practices." American prevailed in federal court. The airline said it was simply matching competitor's fares, not undercutting. When you offer seats at cheap fares, demand increases, and thus airlines are justified in adding additional capacity.
Once the discount carrier retreats or folds, fares go up, demand drops and seats come out.
That may well be what happens on the Atlanta-Los Angeles route, but it's perhaps more interesting to look at what was happening on that route before all the recent commotion.
Unisys Corp.'s airline-industry consultants recently did some analysis on the Atlanta-Los Angeles market and found that customers already were going to great lengths to avoid Delta's monopoly. Even though it had the only non-stops on the route, Delta had only 58% of the passengers traveling between those two cities in the year ended last June, Unisys found. Many Delta passengers were also making connections: Of the 800,000 people who flew between Atlanta and the Los Angeles area in that 12-month period, fewer than half made the trip on a Delta non-stop.
How'd they get there? America West Airlines, which offers one-stop service through Phoenix and Las Vegas, was a surprising No. 2 in the market last year, with 13% of all passengers.
Now, I wonder if anyone will bother to read this.
I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention. What was that?