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Amazon and Walmart Are In An All-Out Price War That Is Terrifying Big Brands (recode.net)
gollum123 quotes a report from Recode: Last month, Walmart gathered some of America's biggest household brands near its Arkansas headquarters for a tough talk. For years, Walmart had dominated the retail landscape on the back of its "Everyday Low Price" guarantee. Walmart wants to have the lowest price on 80 percent of its sales, according to a presentation the company made at the summit, which Recode reviewed. To accomplish that, the brands that sell their goods through Walmart would have to cut their wholesale prices or make other cost adjustments to shave at least 15 percent off. In some cases, vendors say they would lose money on each sale if they met Walmart's demands. Brands that agree to play ball with Walmart could expect better distribution and more strategic help from the giant retailer. And to those that didn't? Walmart said it would limit their distribution and create its own branded products to directly challenge its own suppliers. But this time around, Walmart's renewed focus on its "Everyday Low Price" promise coincides with Amazon's increased aggressiveness in its own pricing of the packaged goods that are found on supermarket shelves and are core to Walmart's success, industry executives and consultants say. The result in recent months has been a high-stakes race to the bottom between Walmart and Amazon that seems great for shoppers, but has consumer packaged goods brands feeling the pressure.
I don't know why I would ever shop at Walmart as long as Amazon exists.
But much more of Amazon (avg maybe $100/month), I hope Wal-Mart at least holds its own. Because Amazon is destroying brick-and-mortar retail across America, which in turn is doing a bad number on both suburban malls and town centers.
During a boom when nearly everybody has a good job, there's plenty of business for both online and brick-and-mortar retailers. But when times are hard, people are counting dollars and Amazon wins that game. Not because they're always cheaper, but because they're cheaper in tactical ways - for example, they drove Tower Records, HMV, and Virgin Records out of business by discounting most pop music titles by 35 percent, only to jack prices back up to near-list after their competitors went out of business. Amazon is ruthless. They're not the consumers' friend, and they're certainly not the workers' friend. But they are very good.
Has something like this ever happened before with 2 of the largest retailer companies? I feel like Amazon is going to win in this digital age of being the Walmart 2.0 but I don't know if that's a good thing or bad??
Walmart. If the companies cannot undercut themselves then Walmart won't stock their products.
Guess which department doesn't create value when it comes to making products for the shelf? IT.
The second is ultra expensive health insurance making robots cheaper
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I used to be willing to shop at Walmart, but with their race to the bottom it's become an unbearable place to shop. Their rock-bottom pricing gospel has always attracted people who can't afford to pay anything more than that. Of course this includes many decent people of modest means and quite a few thoroughly unpleasant people. It used to work out well enough when the stores were reasonably staffed and they could keep things in check, but now it seems most of them are being run by a skeleton crew and the damages of the resulting circus are being considered just a cost of doing business. With Amazon, you never have to see these people and suffer the misery of queuing for 15 minutes just to check out. With Walmart, the experience is horrible. So if I'm looking to cheap-out on regular supplies, you can bet I'm going with Amazon. That's why I think they will win out in the end.
Is it worth risking identity theft to avoid a trip to the store? Just asking.
A race to the bottom in prices is bad for the rank and file employees at Amazon and Walmart and bad for product quality. Corners will be cut in both. We've seen the heart of Walmart and Amazon, and it is us the customers, apparently buying on price alone.
At what point does this race to the bottom on prices result in nothing but garbage products?
We're already seeing a major quality drop for a lot of day to day items. I'm all for less expensive products but if they're all junk, what's the point?
They're driving prices down, mostly. Shipping is always an issue, especially with small items.
Fresh produce, meats, etc will be the province brick and mortar for the near future.
The little independent grocery store near me manages to beat the Walmart a mile away on price and quality for meat and produce. But, having seen what's happened elsewhere, they are the exception.
If only we could get this kind of competitive pressure to occur in the healthcare market!
Wal-Mart isn't that cheap, is it? I work close to one, sometimes I drop by because it's convenient or I have a little time to kill. Every single electronics item is going to be cheaper at Amazon, sometimes substantially cheaper. The coffee is cheaper at just a Safeway. The art supplies are somewhat expensive.
The coffee creamer is at a good price, and they have a bunch of shitty $5 T-Shirts. I didn't realize what the "Everyday Low Price Guarantee" meant...I see now they match Amazon prices, which is a cool thing to find out.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Yes, because identify theft and stolen card numbers only happen to people online and never in actual stores or restaurants!
Lower prices are terrifying? That's one sensational headline. Is Slashdot trying to take over Gawker's business?
We'll lose money with every sale, but we'll make it up in volume.
I would think that if the big brands are being shut out, isn't this a great opportunity for small, regionally manufactured technology products to be brought in and promoted?
It would seem that company with a very low-overhead and just in time manufacturing (ordering components when the PO comes in and shipping within the 30-60 days of the contract) could be a viable business. It would be tough for Apple, Sony, and other big brands, but if these companies handle the logistics as well as the promotion, I would think high quality, low cost products which are built in the US (which would make Mr. Trump happy) could be the result of working with them.
Anybody have any numbers at Amazon and Walmart that I can call?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
And so the robot revolution begins.
How are they going to get low prices? By using robots and automated tools to keep the costs down.
And in turn the people currently making the products will not be needed.
And there go all the jobs, just so we can have cheaper things.
Don't blame the robots when the super stores want to fight each other over cheaper prices.
Are you willing to risk identity theft with a strip to a store?
Target, Home Depot, TJMaxx/Marshalls, not to mention all the skimmer incidents...they were all huge and pulled from the store info not the online.
Yeah, it sounds easier to hack into the online storefront but there are usually just a couple of servers and all run by relatively well paid and mostly competent IT staff.
There are thousands of branch stores, all setup by competent people but not really well maintained and any trouble shooting is done by either some manager who is fairly clueless about the technology that makes it all work or the young kid in the store who plays the most video games.
Personally, I'll take SSL/TLS over a $15/hour on premise retail employee for security for large chain stores.
Because of the Walmartians!
But seriously - the non-brand stuff is just awful quality. Jeans and shirts don't last. Socks fall apart. I got tired of taking stuff back... Who wants a guarantee that they continually have to use?
If I were running one of these companies that Walmart is leaning on, I'd just say "go ahead and make your own competing products". the more crap Walmart sells, the more their customers will eventually figure out anything they sell is garbage.
The only thing I go to Walmart for nowadays is glasses and contacts - and that's because I actually like that particular optometrist.
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What do you think of these stories?
Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)
Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (August 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."
Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany/a (February 19, 2013)
I buy most my stuff from Chinese venders aliexpress, dx, geekbuying.
Amazon's prices are outrageous and tend to be unstable. One food item I've bought on occasion would swing from $11 to $20. You don't see that bullshit at Wal-Mart.
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My bottom line is never if I got something for the lowest price. It is if I got the correct functional item. Walmart customer service seems to try to make the customer happy 90% of the time while Amazon customer service is targeting closer to 98% or 99%. That makes a huge difference when the "lower price" item is broken or flawed. Customer's don't care about the "lowest" cost on a worthless item. Treating the customer like the lower cost implies they should expect an item to be provided as-is impacts repeat business regardless of what the future prices are set to.
The thing about Amazon is they care about satisfying the customer's expectations end to end. They don't consider an order completed while there is still pending issues. When they advertise they will get you the item in 2 days, they will make every effort to get the correct item to you quickly. They will provide you the packaging and postage for returning an item and get the replacement out right away.
Walmart makes you jump through hoops to accomplish returns. That item that initially came free 2-day shipping, may have additional surprise expenses such as the amount of time it takes to deal with customer service to get the item shipped back and waiting for them to get around the ship the replacement. And Walmart does not care.
For example, if you take a look at the reviews for Walmart e-Gift cards, you can easily find several complaints of Walmart taking 48 hours or just canceling the order without explanation. Amazon never seems to have the same issues with it's e-Gift cards. An e-Gift card should be the easiest product for a company to control the customer's experience to always be positive and Walmart screws up even that!
No doubt about it, Walmart IT is sophisticated. I've heard stories about how they monitor weather and when hurricane is approaching, fill shelves with extra beer and pop-tarts. Oh, and at a higher price too in stores more likely to have people around who will stock up and ride it out.
Walmart always pays low prices. It's part of their game. They dominate the low-end retail sector and prevent brands from selling to that market unless they cut prices and quality to match Walmart's demands. If the brands don't play, Walmart gives cheaper ones better shelve space and then returns unsold inventory tot he manufacturer for a refund.
They are like any other retailer in that they charge what the market will bear.
Example: Walk in to the TV section. In the hallway before it, you will see many cheap and/or refurbished TV's. As you walk in, you will see better ones at a slightly higher price. Walk further and they have their best sets at full retail. Did they pay full wholesale? Probably not.
As I see it, Walmart isn't a destination. It's what happens at 2am when you are done partying and need to buy something to eat.
You rich people talking about 'ethics' and how employees are being mistreated make me laugh. Only rich people care about such things. The poor people that actually have to work at such shit jobs will be happy that they can buy products cheaply no matter where they come from because otherwise they could not buy them at all. It is amusing to see the astroturfers going to war with each other here. Does anyone else really care about this? It's a good thing and lets hope it continues without either side winning. That would be a win for everyone else. A race to the bottom is really a race to the top for everyone else.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
> Has something like this ever happened before with 2 of the largest retailer companies?
It's ALWAYS happening. Walmart's history specifically includes conquering K-Mart (they were once equals), dueling with Target, and early in Walmart's history they competed directly with the largest retailer at the time - Woolworth's / Woolco. Woolworth and Sear's both built the tallest building in the world at different times, when each was the leading retailer.
The grocery industry is a constant cage match between a few major players. Kroger is the third-largest retailer in the world; they operate about 20 supermarket chain brands. Kroger's main competitor is Albertsons, which has 2,400 stores (about half as many as Walmart).
The words price war needs to be carefully examined. Who are the parties waging war and who is the opponent? There are several meanings taking place. Here is one: Wall Mart is engaging in a price war with it's customers. Wall Mart is removing information, quality and value from the marketplace by insisting that a cheap price matters above all else. With low wages and continuous pressure on suppliers to reduce labor and manufacturing cost, the countryside being destroyed is the society around the customers.
Next, how would we examine the Amazon product marketing activity?
Walmart is notorious for squeezing vendors to provide goods for a lower price, or more product for the same price.
This is why you can walk down almost any aisle in Walmart, if you can find one which has actually been stocked, and see what seems like every third product sporting "BONUS! NOW 30% MORE FREE!" stickers and packaging. This is not being done because the vendor is thrilled to give away 30% more for free, but because Walmart has threatened them to either provide a better value in terms of more product for the same price OR pay Walmart to carry the product OR provide some sort of deal on making a private label version of something Walmart needs, OR if none of those work, Walmart will evict them from the shelves.
If you are a vendor who derives a huge percentage of sales from Walmart, you have to think hard whether it makes sense to throw away all those sales or do as Walmart demands and come up with a bonus package or provide some other service Walmart wants.
In most cases, Walmart demands sales results from everybody. If you are taking up shelf space, and even if your company paid for it, you better sell product, or Walmart WILL kick you. They may also demand that jobbers be sent in to do stocking, but this mainly happens to soft drink and snack chips. In my area, Utz bought shelf space but the stuff didn't sell and they didn't want to do "Bonus! 90MILLION OUNCES FREE!" bullshit and eventually Walmart kicked them out.
Which kind of sucks since the stores are supplied by 1099 contractor route salespeople who can't offer better deals to Walmart because those decisions are made at a much higher level, and then they get kicked out and lose what sales they were making there.
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Real brands stay the hell away from WalMart. You never see NIKEs in them, for instance. They never want to be pressured to lower their quality to make some price target.
What this hits is the off-brands
Remember the Challenger space shuttle? It was designed, built, maintained, and launched by the lowest bidders for materials and manpower.
I do not think I will be purchasing anything that might kill me if it was not perfect (Rx drugs for example) from either source until this settles out. I don't feel suicidal these days.
{o.o}
You can plan to shop and go a few miles further away if the shop does have what you expect (be it quality, quantity , price or service). Healthcare is on the other hand a captive market. For most of it you cannot shop around or make concurrence work. Even if it was a free market , what would a race to the bottom price means for healthcare quality ? Think about it. Then even if quality was maintained. You got two hospitals same distance. You cut yourself bleed heavily. You really think you will have time to compare prices ? Do you even compare cancer treatmet cost ? What about abortion where in some state a lot of clinic closed? And there are many more problems. That is why healthcare cannot be privatized like it is in the us without the huge problem and disparity it generates. If you want to keep healthcare cost down, the uhc is the way to go with governement having a say in the price. That is how country like france ir germany have uhc, without bankrupting themselves, as a percentsge if gdp.
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If you buy from walmart.com and opt for in-store pickup, when you go the store to pick up your order, the employees are **utterly confused**, look at you like you're stupid and have no idea what you're talking about.
It'll take these mouth-breathers 45 minutes to find your order.
Fuck that. I'll stick with Amazon. And they ARE building brick and mortar stores. It's books now, but they'll destroy Walmart if they don't get a fucking clue.
WalMart is likely losing its ass to theft ever since it put in those self checkouts and cut staffing throughout the store so bad that most of the aisles look like a wrecking ball hit them, wouldn't surprise me if they have cut loss prevention back to bankers hours too.
Amazon isn't going to have retail shelves anytime soon, so they'll be fine.
So it's an array of products at Amazon at prevailing prices.
The same thing at WalMart online, except for the near zero cost
low priced shit instore to make up for the intrinsic losses therein.
WalMart could probably be something if it wasn't for that drunk driving relic of a Walton at the top.
I would think that if the big brands are being shut out, isn't this a great opportunity for small, regionally manufactured technology products to be brought in and promoted?
As long as regional includes the Pearl River Delta manufacturing region, guangdong province, southern china, there is indeed an opportunity.
How come I can buy dildos, dongs, vibrators, etc. on Amazon but I can't do that with Wal-Mart? This is a show stopper in a lot of people's books.
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You sheeple. You know how it goes: wages go down ("no that doesn't touch me, 'cause I've a small house over there"), people can't pay their mortgages & rents, bubble bursts... and you lose! Goldman & Sachs wins. Peter Thiel wins. Heck, Donald Trump (no, not the president: the billionaire) wins.
*You* can't win.
But hey, go on a shopping spree while it lasts.
The result in recent months has been a high-stakes race to the bottom between Walmart and Amazon that seems great for shoppers, but has consumer packaged goods brands feeling the pressure.
It's never good for shoppers. Prices will drop, but it is highly unlikely the difference comes out of the pockets of the CEOs or the shareholder profits. It will come out of quality, safety, worker sales or worker numbers, all of which sooner or later cycles back to the disadvantage of the shopper.
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I'm only speculating, but if I was a manufacturer of a desirable brand of widgets and Wal Mart came to me and demanded some price below which I couldn't make money, I would be inclined to come up with some new sub-brand or SKU that was deliberately cheaper to make and then offer THAT to Wal Mart instead of my "good" brand.
Or maybe some subversive version of this, where I moved the good product to a new "platinum" SKU and just junked the quality on the old one.
That way I can preserve my product quality, which presumably has something to do with my brand's success, and keep selling that to other vendors willing to buy it.
If you are a vendor who derives a huge percentage of sales from Walmart, you have to think hard whether it makes sense to throw away all those sales or do as Walmart demands and come up with a bonus package or provide some other service Walmart wants.
With all this cost cutting and pressure on suppliers, I wonder how much of the so called obesity epidemic is due to replacing better ingredients with cheaper, more fattening alternatives.
Some brands will cut corners to survive. Those that won't will be offered buyouts from new owners whose whole business plan is to acquire a brand that built a reputation, and liquidate that reputation by cutting corners and slapping the brand label on it.
All these years when the whole country was talking seriously about main street being decimated by Walmart, did they pay any attention? Did they not see the threat posed by the power of Walmart over the distribution channel?
Some did not. Some did. Those who did figured, "Well it will take Wal mart X number of years to threaten the big brand I manage. My stock options will vest in Y years. X is greater than Y. So let them have their way."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Last week I needed to buy a replacement pair of headphones that day, so I go to the Walmart website and find a pair for $40. When I get to Walmart I the in-store price is $80. I tell the lady at checkout the price on Walmart's website is $40 and ask her to fix the price. She tells me I will need to buy it on the site and choose the in-store pickup option and come back in two hours. I told her that is fucking retarded and to stop messing with me. She said that is the only way, so I get the manager, and he tries to pull the same shit. I said I think I'll drive the extra mile to Best Buy because they have it for $40 as well. They tell me, no, no, don't do that we'll price match Best Buy. I told them "no thanks I'm going to Best Buy. You idiots will price match Best Buy, but not your own website. If you asshats knew Best Buy did not carry them you would force me to order on the website and wait two hours, or fork over $80. You're literally worse than Hitler; if I had one wish, I'd use it to give you taste buds in your asshole." The guy had a pissed off look on his face, and I left Walmart with a raging 24" metaphorical boner because I got to use the taste buds in the asshole line on someone that deserved it.
That was the first time I visited Walmart in five years and my fucking last. I ordered the pair I wanted on Amazon because neither Best Buy or Walmart carried them. Now I'm left wondering how many people paid $80 for $40 headphones because they did not check the website. Seriously, what other store refuses to price match their own fucking website on the spot?
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Walmart is also facing EXTREME pressure on everyday items for grocery as well. My family shops as much as we can at Aldis for things like milk, eggs, bread and other items. Milk for instance is almost .30 cents cheaper than Walmart.
I avoid both companies. Walmart because the quality can't be trusted. Amazon because Bezos is spending the profits from it to publish fake news in the Washington Post and Business Insider.
I've lost count of how many delicious food products were replaced by a store's mediocre brand.
I don't claim to know what's going on in jolly old England, but I occasionally hear about NHS doctor shortages:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Doctors in the US have incentive to go through a very expensive and time consuming education process, because they are some of the highest paid people in our country.
Are doctors in the NHS system similarly incented?
I think it's a great idea. Sorry salespeople.
âoeOnce every three or four years, Walmart tells you to take the money youâ(TM)re spending on [marketing] initiatives and invest it in lower prices,â said Jason Goldberg, the head of the commerce practice at SapientRazorfish, a digital agency that works with large brands and retailers. âoeThey sweep all the chips off the table and drill you down on price.â
in a drawn out race to the bottom the consumer will lose because quality will degrade. In the case of food it could be even more dangerous as cheaper additives are used and corners cut to increase margins. At some point we have to agree that x$ is a reasonable cost.
The auto industry is long-known for having taken the "Beat the supplier over the head with price" approach. It was a monumental failure and the Japanese auto makers, who collaborated with their suppliers on various price improvement mechanisms, were monumentally successful in quality and price. This will fail and Walmart will crash. The question is who else will go down with them riding the coat tails.
The main problem that US healthcare has is that they are not required to publish their price schedules, and they are allowed to engage in discriminatory pricing.
And so far, not many legislators have the spine to even mention this matter.
This is why you get an invoice (if you have health insurance) and it says the bill for you recent visit was $500, but the insurance discount was $450..... And you may have had to pay the co-pay of $15 or $20....
It's not unusual for the insurer discount to be 90% off the cash price,,, so when you read of US medical providers "losing money", it's not unfair to ask of they're losing the cash price money or the insurance discount money...
The problem not often mentioned with socialized health care outside of the US, is that to control costs they usually engage in rationing healthcare.
They schedule a given number of a certain procedures a year, based on their budget, and that's all they do. No matter what.
If they're doing 12 heart transplants this year (one per day, for the first 12 days in January) and you are the 13th person, you have to wait until next year. If you make it that long, that is.
So a lot more people suffer with a much worse quality of life while just waiting for a slot to come up, and a lot of people with life-threatening problems die while waiting for a slot when there's surgeons and operating rooms standing empty most of the year.
In many countries you can't even offer to pay your own money for the care, since that would destroy the "fairness" of the system.
So you never get a bill--but then, a lot of the time, you don't get health care either.
{-and I guess that's fair, in a way--but not the way most people would imagine}
Canada is frequently used as a better of health care than the US--but heath care procedure wait times in the USA are measured in days; in Canada it's measured in months. Some people forget to tell you that part.
http://globalnews.ca/news/1886...
The war on fat probably did more damage on that front than Walmart ever could. They're even selling "low fat" peanut butter these days that has some of the calories from fat replaced by even more calories from sugar. The world's gone mad.
is what you're referring to, and it's mostly B.S. Papa John's could give every employee usable health insurance for .25 cents a pizza + the cost of their yearly Super Bowl free pizza promo. Giving farm workers a livable wage ($15/hr) would add .06 cents to a pound of potatoes.
All that automation means labor isn't as big a part of the equation anymore. It also means we produce more than enough. There's enough food on earth to feed everyone. We don't have a food problem, we have a distribution problem.
My point is: The race to the bottom is real, but it's not because we're so damn efficient or Walmart's prices are too low. It's because we allow it. We abandoned a large percentage of our populace. Largely because it irks us to pay taxes to raise them up and because we're afraid of losing freedom to the large organizations needed to do the raising (e.g. gov't). The ironic thing is we lose more than those taxes as the ruling class bite into our incomes and we lose more freedom as they clamp down to keep us under control.
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Tech really does make us more efficient (despite peoples' jokes to the contrary). But it doesn't just make you more efficient; it makes people who pay you more efficient too. Part of their efficiency, is that they have easier access to a market that includes both you and your competitors and alternatives.
That's the same whether you're selling widgets, or selling the grains passing through the hourglass of your life.
If you need to sell those things, you're under pressure to compete. Lately, people have done much bemoaning the situation where you're selling their time. Foreigners and robots are in the market! But it's not all bad; remember that you are also doing the same thing to everyone else, all the time. And maybe since you're getting things cheaper, you can more easily compete with those foreigners and robots.
Same for the widget sellers. Squeeze your employees. Guess who they squeeze? Wal-Mart and Amazon is going to be part of that too. Why do you think Wal-Mart is so aggressive about pricing? Because they have to compete for cost-conscious shoppers!
We can use deadly force (i.e. protectionist laws) to prevent this, but think carefully: will that really get you anything? Efficiency is truth. It's about knowing that the markup is fair, rather than having to guess which markup is fair and which is unfair. I think I like truth.
Sure is a lot of pressure, though, having to tell the truth all the time.
a lot; it's also led to products sold at Walmart being made of cheaper components than nearly identical models sold elsewhere. (Take a tv, stereo, lawnmower, whatever...) - the outer casing might be the same, but it's not the same components. I don't trust Walmart because of this, it's simply too difficult to know if there's a really good reason what I'm buying there is cheaper for a reason...
But much more of CHINA, I'm trying to cut out the middle man and basically remove packaged products from my life. In the race to the bottom, the bottom isn't a retailer.
Competition is a good thing, but price wars are rarely good for consumers. What ends up happening is margins are sliced so thin, that mfgs. can't profit, and it eventually leads to the cutting of jobs, and when jobs are lost there are less consumers to buy goods from the very retailers that chopped the prices, rinse, repeat.
Another ill effect of price wars is a reduction in product quality, quantity, and safety by the manufacturers. Good old competition is healthy, but strong-arming your suppliers because you have a near monopoly (or a duopoly) ends up hurting everybody in the long run.
The major manufacturers should tell Wal Mart what they should have told them years and years ago: "Go f**k yourself!"
I'll have an easier time getting to the door & checkout if lib kooks like you aren't in there.
I buy my groceries from a couple different locally owned stores. Much better quality and about the same price. Who actually buys Walmart meat anyway? It looks terrible.
Cleaning/household supplies are mostly Amazon and Target. Sometimes I just grab something at the grocery store.
Not that I'd buy the crappy tools Walmart sells anyway, but that stuff mostly comes from Amazon, Home Depot, and Sears.
One thing Walmart has the market cornered for for me though, is motor oil. They are half the price of Amazon and way cheaper than the auto parts chains for Mobil 1 most of the time, unless you can catch a Lightning Deal or something.
This has been going on for a LONG time with WalMart. For electronics, look at the part numbers - they are different for WalMart, sometimes with just a "-WM" on the end of the normal part number. Why on earth would an "identical" product sold there have a different part #? Because they are such a big retailer it is worth it for the manufacturers to make an 'identical' product but cut corners in whatever ways will cut their costs to meet the price demands.
They have been doing this for a very long time. You can't just magically get a product for cheaper than other places. If you buy anything used, like on eBay or CL, always check the entire part number.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Very little? (1) The process of replacing "better" ingredients with cheaper, more fattening* alternatives is as old as the 1900s. (2) Suppliers are no saints and most engage in cost cutting across the board regardless of pressure from Walmart. (3) A large part of the price of name brands is a combination of profits and the cost of advertising. (4) The obesity epidemic trends especially from the 1990s onward and hence the root cause must stem from changes then which has little to do with (1) or the history of Walmart (which started in the 1960s).
* Alternatives may be less fattening. Or less filling. Or being cheaper might encourage overeating. Or people may just accept the idea that obesity is okay and everyone who cares about their weight is a "health nut".
Actually the box stores use contractors to be hands-on support that calls into the contracted service company. Store people are not allowed to touch that shit. Now if we could get the store people from using the server room as extra storage space...
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Only on the Internet will you find people debating that a company fighting for low prices on behalf of its customers is a bad thing.
My favorite article on the subject is now almost 15 years old. December, 2003: https://www.fastcompany.com/47...
Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.
Of course, U.S. companies have been moving jobs offshore for decades, long before Wal-Mart was a retailing power. But there is no question that the chain is helping accelerate the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries such as China. Wal-Mart, which in the late 1980s and early 1990s trumpeted its claim to "Buy American," has doubled its imports from China in the past five years alone, buying some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002. That's nearly 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States.
I'd love to see an updated story with new numbers, and that covers Amazon.
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Come on, editors! 200 comments and the summary still has this shit:
vendors say they would lose money on each sale if they met WalmartÃ(TM)s demands. Brands that agree to play ball with Walmart could expect better distribution and more strategic help from the giant retailer. And to those that didnÃ(TM)t?
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On Amazon you have to pay shipping. Always! Its expensive, since you're shipping _one_ item in the mail.
It may not be what you want. You can't hold it, touch it, feel its heft. You might have to send it back, at your expense.
Really? I don't even know anyone who shops at a Walmart. I never have. I've been in one once, and that was a frightening enough experience for me. Who are these people? I thought it was all just deplorable southerners who were stupid enough to shop there.
Very little.
Here's the thing about food: it all has calories and most of them are empty.
Peanut butter is pretty good yeah? And it is supposedly "healthy" right? But its made from peanuts, and nuts are ludicrously high in fat, which is ludicrously high in calories. So a tablespoon of peanut butter has about 100 calories in it, which is actually more than the same volume of ice cream.
"Healthy" is a term made up to sell high calorie foods to people who think weight gain is about what you eat, not how much.
Great read: Man who said no to Wal-Mart
At some point the money must have been too good to pass up, or perhaps Wal-Mart gave them special concessions, because I see Snapper being sold through Wal-Mart now: Wal-Mart search for Snapper.
not that's is relevant to the story, but maybe you should look into how Sweden reinvented their education system and gave kids access to calculators as young as possible. Result? they're a leading country in many disciplines, including math.
Subtracting without using a computer is not a value-added skill.
lucm, indeed.
I'm wacky, when I go to a store I use CASH. Silly me!
That would be a win for everyone else. A race to the bottom is really a race to the top for everyone else.
More accurately, it's a win for the general interest, and a lose for special interests (the manufacturers who are squeezed).
A true test of character is whether you vote against policies that help a special interest at the expense of the general interest -- even if that special interest is YOU.
Oh, and what you call a "shit job" is, to the person who does it, the best job they can get. By definition. If they could switch to a better job, they would.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
There's no way in hell the private industry can do it cheaper when they have to make a profit and report to shareholders
Why not apply that argument to every industry, then?
All auto manufacturing should be taken over by a government agency -- there's no way private industry can do it cheaper when they have to make a profit and report to shareholders.
Intel, AMD, Apple and Samsung... their fabs and engineering activities should be taken over by a government agency -- there's no way private industry can do it cheaper when they have to make a profit and report to shareholders.
Food is an even more basic human need than healthcare. So all farming, food distribution, and restaurants should be taken over by a government agency -- there's no way private industry can do it cheaper when they have to make a profit and report to shareholders.
Actually, because they have to make a profit is precisely why private enterprises have demonstrated time and time again that they are more efficient and innovative than government agencies -- which use other people's money, coercively obtained, to continue their operations.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
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