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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.
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.
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.
If you even bothered to read the summary, the branded products at Walmart have been given "other cost adjustments". That means they are lower quality products compared to the "same" model at other stores. Walmart is a disease.
Odds are that a long time ago the friends you had were Walmart sales associates, and today your friends are Amazon techies. Just for fun compare the same kind of job levels and you'll be surprised how Walmart employees at the bottom of the pyramid have more opportunities than those at Amazon.
Almost all top managers at Walmart HQ started in Walmart stores. How many top managers at Amazon started in the fulfillment centers?
lucm, indeed.
Look at a rubbermaid mop bucket at Home depot. Then look at a rubbermaid mop bucket at Walmart. Then tell me their is 'no evidence'.
Walmart is notorious for squeezing so hard, they get a shitty, brand destroying version to sell.
Then you get 'brand destroying' enterprises like MTD mowers and you get a true shitstorm of junk.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The war ended, as the last two humans on Earth, locked in desperate combat, struggled to slay the other, but each succumbed to exhaustion at the same moment.
Peace, then reigned, and goodwill was triumphant.
Like this?
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Rubbermaid-Commercial-Products-Brute-10-Qt-Red-Bucket-FG296300RED/202649172
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Rubbermaid-Professional-Plus-Round-Brute-Bucket/16622204
Sure, same basic product, but different part numbers; the labeling and packaging is probably visibly different in the stores as well. BTW you can get the crappy model on amazon too.
The walmart one is good enough for 99.9% of us, and anyone who needs a better bucket probably knows not to cheap out in the first place. Some of us don't want to spend double for something made for more heavy duty jobs than we'll ever need it for. And no one's forcing Rubbermaid to manufacture it or do business with walmart at all if it's unprofitable or "destroying their brand". If it were they could sell it under a different brand name altogether.
Not every product from every brand needs to be "premium"; not every car Chevy sells is a Camero.
Walmart 2-day shipping is a lie. There. That is the difference.
When you order from Amazon with a two-day delivery, you can reasonably expect Amazon will hit that goal, pretty much all the time. It's extremely dependable.
When you do an equivalent order from Walmart, well... they may not even ship it for two days, and it may ship ground from halfway across the country, and may show up for in-store pickup in five or seven days.
I ordered a TV with two-day delivery a couple summers ago, so not during Christmas or any rush period. Silly me, I assumed two-day meant two-day. In reality, they shipped it via Fedex Ground from over 1000 miles away, and it took five whole days, not two, and then I had to stand in line in the store for 45 minutes behind people doing returns and buying Western Union and money orders, just to claim my item, which they initially could not find. Mind you, it was a 40" TV so not small or anything. It turned out they had been using my TV box to prop open the door to the pick-up area.
More recently, I tried to order a smartphone for in-store pick-up. It was supposed to be at the store and I could just walk in and get it, but I did pick-up just to save time. Paid for it online before the store opened for the day and waited for the email to come pick it up. Never got the email. So I called them. And well, they never bothered to go fulfil the online orders that morning and the stock they had, including the one I had already paid for, got sold when the doors opened and regular customers came in. And now they were out of stock and sucks to be me. Nobody in the store gave a shit. Online is a whole other department and nobody in the store felt any responsibility to do anything for them. At best, they worried only about their own store stuff, not online orders, so nobody even cared that they had failed to secure an item that had been paid for. Oh well.
This happens so often, the online side instantly refunded the money the moment I asked. That's the only thing that actually happened as promised. Refunds.
tl;dr Walmart has grand goals to be like Amazon but they drop the ball in making it happen. Their ads promise what they can't deliver, so no, it's not equivalent
at all.
Sig for hire.
Get the government out of health care and health insurance entirely,
We already tried that in the UK. The NHS works better.
This.
The NHS, for all its faults is better than any other system I've used. It is certainly light years ahead of the Australian system... which is light centuries ahead of the US system.
The problem the US has is that health care companies have license to bill... then license to bill again. So they charge the government first, then the user. If the US simply forklifted an NHS system in, health care costs will drop almost immediately. The UK's NHS certainly has issues (GBP 10 million spent on erectile dysfunction drugs last year) but it is at least designed to put the patient first and does this pretty damn well. The US health care system is designed to protect profits, not people.
Remember that the US govt spends more per person on healthcare than the NHS spends per person. There's no way in hell the private industry can do it cheaper when they have to make a profit and report to shareholders (In the UK, the NHS shareholders are the people using the service).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
But American Healthcare has been publicly funded for decades. In fact, the cost of healthcare in America was under that of Germany before socialized healthcare was brought in.
Sorry but that is incorrect.
American health care corporations have been publicly funded for decades, but not healthcare itself.
Also you're spending far more than countries with public health care. 2015 expenditure per capita in USD:
Australia = $4420
Canada = $4608
France = $ 4407
Germany $ 5267
UK = $4003
US = $9451
Out of the 35 OCED countries, the US is the most expensive with Luxembourg taking up the number 2 spot ($7765). Out of the 217 countries surveyed by the WHO, the US is 217. You can take 27 off of that number if you like because the WHO has no statistics for 27 nations, but I'd find it hard to believe that French Polynesia has a significantly higher health care spend than the US.
So it isn't that the US doesn't have the money to spend, its just that the system is completely wrong. If the US copied the UK's NHS verbatim, you would half the cost of your health care and eliminate almost all out of pocket expenses and probably 90% of all insurance premiums.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Example, I've had the same damn $300 work boots for 5 years!
Which means that, five years ago, you have $300 of disposable income. Meanwhile, someone else who didn't had to spend $40 every six months on cheap boots that fell apart by the end of that time. At the end of the five years, they've spent $400, you've spent $300 and your boots are still fine, but that doesn't help them if they didn't have $300 to spend on boots at any point. To make things worse, they're now had to spend $100 more of their income than you. This is one of the bit reasons why poverty is difficult to escape.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Granted, a portion of the blame here also resides with PayPal, but still extremely frustrating. I burned up almost all the minutes on my then pre-paid flip phone with Walmart and Paypal trying to resolve it.
Side note, it is hard as fuck. But even with a decade in prison, and a felony record, I now have a great job, a side business, bought a new car 2 years ago and now own a home. All in a bit over 5 years. It took a lot of luck, good friends, and a pile of hard work. So if you are unemplyed, have strikes against you etc, don't give up.
Silence is a state of mime.
Dollar General, for when you don't quite need the quality of Walmart