Walmart doesn't close down anyone.


Customer's choose to shop at Walmart over the other local businesses. If the customers did not get a greater benefit from shopping there, then they would just keep on shopping at the other stores.


Blame the customers if you wish.

If you offer a better value to your customers than the next guy, and more people come to you, does that mean that you are putting those other people out of business? Should your customers be forced to do business with your competitors, and not with you, because it's unfair that you offer better value?

How about we just force people to pay higher prices for the goods that they want and need, so that we can be "fair" to businesses that charge more?



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big box stores doesn't close down anyone? i just want to clarify this point

The example I am using from is from my hometown here.

Our downtown area is really small, and was already dead before WalMart moved in. When the Rainbow Market closed, it took out the other three businesses in the small shopping center it anchored including a Taco Bell and a pizza place. The sandwich shops are still in place, as are the few smaller stores.

We were all pissed when we found out that Wal Mart was coming to our town. (It's a Wal Mart "Neighborhood Grocery" store really.) We thought Wal Mart would kill our downtown area, when it's done the direct opposite - it's given people a reason to shop downtown, because no one visited the old Rainbow Market.

all the best to you guys. it will be that much harder for your kids to develop their own business and style.

you now have walmart.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/...#ixzz2brbm0TOS

You argument is like which comes first the chicken or the egg.

Walmart affects the closure of stores nearby period. The # of business closures near a walmart is much higher then areas miles from one. (You can google this shit and find supporting facts)

Here's a link or 2 for Baddog

http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/03/25/...nt-compete-wi/

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/job...sinesses/3272/

http://www.nber.org/papers/w11782

"The employment results indicate that a Wal-Mart store opening reduces county-level retail employment by about 150 workers, implying that each Wal-Mart worker replaces approximately 1.4 retail workers. This represents a 2.7 percent reduction in average retail employment.""

I like you, and please dont take this as an attack on you or your ideas. But the flaw in your arguments and has already been mentioned is that people are voting with $. If enough people felt that way, they would stop shopping there and stores would close.

Here is what i recall from my personal experience... when i was a child, i grew up in a tiny town in Alaska. Buying clothes or anything really meant mail order or driving 4hrs to Anchorage. Ones whole life revolved around wanting things that just weren't available. Music. Clothes. A fuse, a valve. A guage. Almost anything.

For much of my childhood, i remember endless discussion about fast food and big stores and why there were not more of them. For example, Anchorage at about 250,000 people had a few McDonalds at the time (3 i believe). No wallmart.

The position of Wallmart then was that it took a population of 500,000 to support one store (their belief/growth strategy at the time).

McDonalds, i remember from those who i knew owned some of the first fast food franchises in the state, wanted certain amount of car/foot traffic in front of the door and a population of at least 50,000 people.

Anyway, as you can guess, eventually Wallmart opened a store in Anchorage. Of course, there are tons of fast food places. They learned how profitable they could be in small markets and all that early thinking would seem draconian and absurd today.

I grew up outside of a town of less than 5,000 people. That town of 5,000 people now has a Wallmart, Home Depot, Costco etc. This seemed like an insane futuristic fantasy when i was little. I grew up with all the small stores, all the mom and pop stores. We always knew the families, everyone's kids always went to school together and grew up together and so on. The idea that somehow mom and pop stores are better is bullshit. They employ a handful of poorly paid people, customer service was almost always nonexistent and selection of course, was obviously next to nothing. Either you bought the spoiled fruit they had.. or you had no fruit.

In fact, with respect to customer service - people keep forgetting this is a relatively new thing. The small stores failed miserably at customer service. Yonger people have absolutely no clue how things were. There was the romanatic idea of a small town store that knew all the customers... but there was the reality that was that service sucked. Seriously... you are old enough to remember this....

Remember when every store or cafe or small business had this next the cash register?

http://www.tealdragon.net/humor/graphics/when.gif

Remember when every store or cafe or small business had something like this on the wall behind the counter?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OjR4hHXGyc....115982086.jpg

Here is the part that no one seems to get. A town of 5,000 people now has a wallmart. This brings in 1000s of people from outside that town to spend money there. I could go on and on and on about the obvious benefits to all the truck drivers, freight managers, logistics teams, forklift drivers, shipping companies, printing companies, local banks, merchant banks, local business - restaurants, gas stations, tourist traps etc etc etc all obviously benefiting from the presence of these huge stores, but its going to fall on deaf ears.

What a Wallmart pays an employee is not directly tied to the full benefits of a small town seeing a massive rise in the number of visitors and turn over of goods - and that it means to the town.

And if no one liked Wallmart, they would stop shopping at Wallmart. There is ALWAYS a demand for alternatives. The simple truth is that the vast majority of people want the low prices of Wallmart, Target etc. If they didn't, they wouldn't be there. Wallmart is a fucking nightmare anywhere. Go to the one in Tampa on Dale Mabry (close to Kennedy) and you'll find yourself wishing you had a gun on you for protection. In fact, its scary just walking up to the front doors because of the crowd thats there. But even then, they thrive. The lowest common denominator of society is the market. The people that ONLY care about price. That is the business model. Tell a bunch of food stamp using, welfare mothers they now have to go to a little mom and pop store and pay more for a small selection and see how that goes, Obviously its not going to work.

This to me is actually an interesting point that no one really under 35/40 understands.

Customer service is new relatively idea.

Treating the customer right is a relatively new idea.

The understanding that its cheaper to keep customers than find new customers is a relatively new idea.

A whole revolution took place in retail to start putting the customer first. It WASN'T the mom and pop stores leading this charge. It was all the large companies you hate so much.

3 decades ago, a customer in almost any small business was looked at and treated as a nuisance.

Looks like the spread of the zombie apocolypse

I am not under 35/40 and I completely disagree with you on this.

.

To be fair, you might be too old.

Was that a burn? I think that was a burn.

:disgust:disgust:disgust:disgust:disgust

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...two-years.html

and these guys are cheaper than walmart and pay their employees better. OMG it must be impossible
http://business.time.com/2013/08/07/...rst-nightmare/

Maybe where you come from. I was a service advisor over 20 yrs ago. And we were taught without the customer we are nothing. When I was a little boy there was a mom/pop grocer on the corner, Tom the owner knew all his customers by name and always had a big smile on his face.
Actually now they talk about it more and its just words but they treat people like shit.

:thumbsup:thumbsup

back then it wasn't 'customer service'

it was doing your job.

right, and mom and pops stores had such a huge variety right?

you telling me mom and pops stores have super high quality products? :1orglaugh

Some dedicated walmart customers here ………… wow ………. Favorite restaurant in the walmart lobby also?

more like smart people who don't like to bend over and overpay for stuff... there's one mom and pops store around my area selling anything from kitchen appliances to shavers, trimmers, blenders, etc... I can literally open up amazon and get it 20-30% cheaper with free shipping, boggles my mind who the fuck buys shit there, that's what mom and pops store is all about, over charging for shit

i choose where to buy products that matter

i dont know why you are stuck on the phrase mom and pop shops

how about shopping somewhere canadian?

products made in canada..or from reputable companies overseas?
German...swiss..italian...quality products

not some shit that has bad paint that poisons kids

it is 100% up to you...i have told my wife not to shop there....she doesn't for the most part...i try never to support them

it is not like the same products are in other stores..you know walmart dictates the price to the manufacturers because they buy in such volume. This forces them to go outside their normal chain and get it done cheaper.

enjoy your cheap products, i am not mad...i dont get why you are.

shop at walmart....do what you want
i care not about the minds of others anymore

100 http://images.inquisitr.com/wp-conte...7239418464.jpgs

more like slaves :2 cents: did you know that if you help someone on break you can get fired? :helpme also the rules are fucking tight as shit :1orglaugh

Will it happening at the supplier level be good enough?

WalMart insisted on selling one gallon jars of Vlastic for $2.97. This left a penny profit per jar for Vlastic. When they asked for a break, WalMart threatened to yank all of their business, which contributed to 30% of their revenue.

Finally, when Vlastic had no other choice but to file bankruptcy, WalMart's response was:

"Well, we've done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it. We can back off."

Interesting article that you probably won't read because it does not support your views:

http://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know

Walmart sounds like lazy dude!

:2 cents::1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Conveniently you left out the most important part.

Finally, Wal-Mart let Vlasic up for air. "The Wal-Mart guy's response was classic," Young recalls. "He said, 'Well, we've done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it. We can back off.' " Vlasic got to take it down to just over half a gallon of pickles, for $2.79. Not long after that, in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy--although the gallon jar of pickles, everyone agrees, wasn't a critical factor.

To be honest, if I wasn't going to read it it would be probably because it was longer than I felt like reading and if Vlasic did not want to do business with Wal-Mart, they did not have to. :2 cents:

Besides, what you are saying is the exact opposite of what that KillerK said was happening (jacking up of the prices).

I did find the part about Levi's interesting because it is a product I support. Unfortunately, they are on their way out so partnering with Wal-Mart makes sense. Look what it did for Harley-Davidson when they sold to AMF.

Oh I had no idea! OMG I'll never shop there again!! So you are saying that wal mart is going to put my bud light out of biz cause they sell a case of beer $6 cheaper than my local liquor store? Or how about a bottle of patron.. It costs $55 at my local liquor store, $45 at Martins and $41 at wal mart.. Oh no soon patron will go out of biz cause of wal mart!! :1orglaugh

Ya I'll keep shopping at wal mart and save $10-15 a week on my groceries while you can spend your extra money at mom and pop places. I can still sleep at night just fine

That isn't what I said.

hmmm . . .
.99 to $1.79 sounds like a jack :2 cents:

WinCo: worker-owned grocery chain that pays benefits, pensions, living wages -- and has lower prices than WalMart


http://boingboing.net/2013/08/12/win...rocery-ch.html

"WinCo is a midwestern chain of worker-owned stores that consistently underprice WalMart, while still paying a living wage to their staff and decent prices to their suppliers. Their secret appears to be a smaller selection of goods, sourced directly from factories -- but surely the fact that they're not extracting billions in profits for a family of rapacious plutocrats also helps keep prices low.

Burt Flickinger III, a reputable grocery store analyst, called them "Walmart's worst nightmare." They provide health benefits to all employees who work 24 hours per week or more, as well as pensions. They are expanding into Texas, and Time's Brad Tuttle predicts that they'll double in size every five to seven years.

Prices are kept low through a variety of strategies, the main one being that it often cuts out distributors and other middle men and buys many goods directly from farms and factories. WinCo also trims costs by not accepting credit cards and by asking customers to bag their own groceries. Similarly to warehouse membership stores like Sam?s Club and Costco, and also to successful discount grocers with small stores like Trader Joe?s and Aldi, WinCo stores are organized and minimalist, without many frills, and without the tremendous variety of merchandise that?s become standard at most supermarkets. ?Everything is neat and clean, but basic,? Hauptman told Supermarket News. ?Though the stores are very large, with a lot of categories, they lack depth or breadth of variety.?

While all of these factors help WinCo compete with Walmart on price, what really might scare the world?s largest retailer is how WinCo treats its employees. In sharp contrast to Walmart, which regularly comes under fire for practices like understaffing stores to keep costs down and hiring tons of temporary workers as a means to avoid paying full-time worker benefits, WinCo has a reputation for doing right by employees. It provides health benefits to all staffers who work at least 24 hours per week. The company also has a pension, with employees getting an amount equal to 20% of their annual salary put in a plan that?s paid for by WinCo; a company spokesperson told the Idaho Statesman that more than 400 nonexecutive workers (cashiers, produce clerks, and such) currently have pensions worth over $1 million apiece."

Meet the Low-Key, Low-Cost Grocery Chain Being Called ?Walmart?s Worst Nightmare?

http://business.time.com/2013/08/07/...rst-nightmare/

"Retail analysts say the world?s biggest retailer has reason to fear a small grocery chain that?s based in Idaho and boasts a business model that allows it to undercut Walmart on prices.

So about that eye-catching Walmart quote. Those are the words of Burt Flickinger III, a widely respected supermarket-retailing-industry expert who works for the Strategic Resource Group. Flickinger was quoted in a recent Idaho Statesman story about WinCo, a chain of roughly 100 supermarkets in the western U.S., based in Boise, Idaho.

?WinCo arguably may be the best retailer in the western U.S.,? Flickinger says while touring a WinCo store. ?WinCo is really unstoppable at this point,? he goes on. ?They?re Walmart?s worst nightmare.?

Flickinger isn?t the only industry insider discussing WinCo and Walmart in the same breath. ?While many supermarkets strive to keep within a few percentage points of Walmart stores? prices, WinCo Foods often undersells the massive discount chain,? the industry publication Supermarket News explained last spring.

How does WinCo manage to undercut Walmart on prices? And why should the world?s largest retailer have any reason to fear a small regional grocery chain that most Americans have never heard of?

First off, the reason you probably haven?t heard of WinCo is partly that at this point its stores are limited to a handful of states in the West. But WinCo is a little-known player also because the company is a privately held enterprise that seems to take its privacy seriously, preferring a low-key, low-profile approach ? which is extremely rare in a world of retailers boisterously begging for shoppers? attention.

Simply put, WinCo ?communicates low prices by delivering low prices,? Jon Hauptman, a partner at Willard Bishop, a retail-consulting firm, told Supermarket News. ?WinCo doesn?t do much to communicate price and value. It convinces shoppers of value based on the shopping experience, rather than relying on smoke and mirrors to convince them.?

As for how WinCo can deliver such low prices, the Statesman story details the company?s history and business model. It all began, interestingly enough, when two Idaho businessmen opened a warehouse-type discount store with a name that could have been pulled from a movie slyly spoofing Walmart. Waremart, it was called. The company became employee-owned in 1985, and changed its name to WinCo (short for Winning Company) in 1999.

Prices are kept low through a variety of strategies, the main one being that it often cuts out distributors and other middlemen and buys many goods directly from farms and factories. WinCo also trims costs by not accepting credit cards and by asking customers to bag their own groceries. Similar to warehouse membership stores like Sam?s Club and Costco, and also to successful discount grocers with small stores like Trader Joe?s and Aldi, WinCo stores are organized and minimalist, without many frills, and without the tremendous variety of merchandise that?s become standard at most supermarkets. ?Everything is neat and clean, but basic,? Hauptman told Supermarket News. ?Though the stores are very large, with a lot of categories, they lack depth or breadth of variety.?

While all these factors help WinCo compete with Walmart on price, what really might scare the world?s largest retailer is how WinCo treats its employees. In sharp contrast to Walmart, which regularly comes under fire for practices like understaffing stores to keep costs down and hiring tons of temporary workers as a means to avoid paying full-time workers benefits, WinCo has a reputation for doing right by employees. It provides health benefits to all staffers who work at least 24 hours per week. The company also has a pension, with employees getting an amount equal to 20% of their annual salary put in a plan that?s paid for by WinCo; a company spokesperson told the Idaho Statesman that more than 400 nonexecutive workers (cashiers, produce clerks and such) currently have pensions worth over $1 million apiece.

Generally speaking, shoppers tolerate Walmart?s empty shelves and subpar customer service because the prices are so good. The fact that another retailer ? even a small regional one ? is able to compete and sometimes beat Walmart on prices, while also operating well-organized stores staffed by workers who enjoy their jobs, like their employer and genuinely want the company to be successful? Well, that?s got to alarm the world?s biggest retailer, if not keep executives up at night.

While WinCo does keep its business quiet, we do know one thing: the company is in the process of expanding to new states, with two locations opening in north Texas next year, for example. Flickinger anticipates rapid growth in the near future, with WinCo doubling in size every five to seven years going forward.

http://business.time.com/2013/08/07/...rst-nightmare/

That is correct. The stores don't shut other businesses down.... They are not allowed to go in and shut down a store. (Only government can do that).

The customers that stop shopping at the other businesses and instead shop at the big box stores cause them to shut down.




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Cause and Effect!

so it does happen.

big box stores can operate at a loss for much longer than small local business. on that basis alone, you're trying to compare apples and oranges, while contradicting yourself.

1. The big box stores don't operate at a loss.


2. It happens, but the customers vote for which store they prefer by shopping there. The store doesn't "put other stores out of business", the customers do.

Before supermarkets, it would take half of the day to do your shopping. You had to go to a butcher shop, and wait in line. Then you had to go to a grocer, and tell the clerk what you wanted from behind the counter, and wait for him to fill your order for dry goods. Then you had to go to several vegtable markets to get your fresh veg, and if it wasn't in season locally, then you couldn't get it. Then you had to go to the baker, etc, etc, etc....


When supermarkets came along in the 1930s, people screamed that they were putting the other stores out of business. In N.J, they even passed a law that said that supermarkets, which bought in bulk, were not allowed to make their prices lower than the grocers and butchers. (The people screamed that they didn't want to be forced to pay more, and the law was shortly repealed).

Would you rather that the supermarket had also never come along, and we were forced to go to 6 or 7 places for our daily food shopping?

I bet that there are a lot of poor and working class families out there that might not be too happy if you came along and told them that they were no longer allowed to save money by shopping at big box stores, and instead they had to go back to spending more at the others, as well as having to spend all the time and gas going to several of them to get all of their goods.

The fact is that if you wish to charge less for your products, then no one has the right to tell you otherwise, and if you want to do business with someone that charges you less for products, then how is that someone elses business either?

I really don't understand the statists need to control other peoples actions. Let people interact voluntarily and peacefully. The only way a transaction occurs is when both parties perceive a gain in value.

For example let's say that your work generates $200 of value for you in one day, and you decide you want a tablet. If you buy an ipad for that $200, it's because you find the ipad worth more to you than the effort involved in making the $200. If Apple decides to sell it to you, it's because the $200 is worth more to them than the effort to make the ipad. BOTH PARTIES BENEFIT.




Can you explain why statist feel the need to control others so much? Is it that you like to be controlled also?





.:helpme


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More like saves them millions. You think a walmart employee is going to say "Oh shit, walmart isnt hiring. I guess I'm going to have to go get a high paying skilled labor job that I'm totally capable of doing. I don't mind working hard. If I do this I won't have to ask for food stamps either"

http://www.momandpopnyc.com/campaign...2010.26.00.pdf

Yup, just like New Jersey in the 1930s, as I quoted above. "Illegally" selling products below cost? :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh What is "legal" or "illegal" about what someone chooses to charge someone else for their product?

This completely smells of regulations driven by lobbyists from a group of local businesses that want to keep out competition and charge their customers more by making low prices "illegal". If I choose to sell you a BMW for $1, is that "illegal"?


Government politicians will do ALL SORTS of things to pay back their local political donors.


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