1) All the employees look sad, all he time.
2) They've obviously carefully tuned their check out staffing so that the lines are always long. This is such a constant that it has to be intentional, and they're doing a good job of it.
3) Sometimes they attempt to check receipts at exit. I don't get that at any other non-membership store.
4) All the shoppers look sad.
5) It's the only place I know where I am 100% guaranteed to smell both strong cigarette odor and way too-strong perfume application multiple times per visit.
6) The shoppers are uniquely talentless when it comes to existing in space without being in others' way. I don't see this anywhere else. It always feels 3x as busy as it is both because they cram the aisles full of crap, and because no-one knows how to walk or stand without being in the way. It's bizarre.
7) The most prominently-placed thing on entering the building is a row of gambling machines. I shit you not. They're directly ahead, and you have to veer right to enter the actual shopping area. That definitely sets a tone.
Most of these are true at any other Wal-Mart I visit. I avoid them most of the time, despite their having much lower prices than, say, target. The visits take longer and are miserable. Their weird interior color choices (WTF is up with that dirty-looking orangey-yellow?!) and something they do with the lighting (can't put my finger on it, it's just drab and dingy) make it even worse.
I'm about 90% sure that Wal-Mart didn't used to be this gross and unpleasant.
The Walmart near me isn't like this. Only #2 is true.
Walmart is probably the #1 big box store where I live. Everyone shops there, rich and poor alike. It's clean, the people are fine and the staff are as happy as any other big box store staff. The Walmarts in the adjacent towns are similar. Most Walmarts I've seen are about like this. The tire center will have a Festiva in one bay and a Tesla in the nest
The Walmart near my work is very different. Way more dismal in all the ways you've described. I dunno about the gambling thing, that may vary by state and I've never seen it anywhere. But where I work has enough wealthy people to support other stores so the Walmart clientele is much poorer on average. I've been in probably a dozen Walmarts over the years and it's by far the worst.
It's similar to visiting a small town DMV.
Your description of gambling machines reminds me of my last visit back home in IL, after they legalized gambling. It's very jarring to walk past locals glued to video slot machines at 9AM in a gas station. It's depressing as hell, I'm sure the walmarts have cashed in on the action too but I didn't visit one while there.
They've installed these gates at the walmart nearest to me that essentially force you to walk through a checkout line even if you don't end up buying anything. Most necessities are locked in cases and I always struggle to find the single employee with the key to any particular case, who then has to follow me to the checkout and have me pay for the item immediately.
The H-E-B two miles down the road is significantly nicer in almost every capacity and only marginally more expensive. The time I save not waiting in checkout lines (I scan everything on my phone at H-E-B then bag it while I shop) and looking for keys quite literally makes up the price difference and then some.
I've lived in five different states and been to Walmarts and flipped cars and the variance is EXACTLY like variance in DMVs in both QoS, clientele/employee demographics.
Another interesting window in this vein is the local courthouse. The smaller towns don't separate out traffic violations from everything else, it's all on display handled in one room. You can get a sense of what's going on and the type of people in a given small town rather quickly this way.
When there's just one grocer serving a given area, it's effectively the same situation. But when competition eventually arrives, I think they tend to quickly divide along class boundaries.
Around here there's only one grocery store in my local town, and as a result it's actually pretty decent. The exact same chain has a very similar store in a significantly larger town ~25 miles away, where there's a competing upper-class grocer in the adjacent lot. The effect is devastating on the mediocre chain. Customers are treated poorly, the place is a filthy mess, cashiers aren't even trusted enough to manually enter prices when a barcode won't scan. The contrast is shocking, just next door in the higher end grocer none of these problems are experienced, but the prices are slightly higher.
This is why Walgreens is closing stores in SF. They cannot survive with the rampant unprosecuted shoplifting in SF.
I can say some of the shops around here have always been pricey, but a Lidl came in to town and manages to undercut every other store by around 30% on pretty much every comparable item. Overall, stores making 0.5% profit simply doesn't add up. We've got more new chains moving in to the area, existing stores moving (merely half a mile away for access to better demographics), and this is all costing tens of millions in construction alone. Note: I realize that other regions may have store closures to balance this out too - some areas boom, others shrink.
I can not believe multi-billion companies would be putting up tens/hundreds of millions to chase after these minuscule (and apparently shrinking) profit margins. Maybe I'm wrong. Or perhaps this meme of "grocery stores never make a profit!" is wrong, or at least overblown. A quick check up of a regional store indicates their net profit is somewhere around 2.3% of sales volume - not stellar, but not terribly close to 0.5% either.
EDIT: bit more info/breakdown on the subject: https://thegrocerystoreguy.com/what-is-the-profit-margin-for...
EDIT 2: FWIW, on your $200 example, the company making 'only' $1, it's probably more like $4-$5, but that's after all other expenses (labor, inventory, insurance, advertising, etc) is factored in.
Lidl is probably coming in and destroying competition by running leaner operations with less payroll due to not having to deal with legacy unions. It happens and has happens in many businesses (see declining real wages for past few decades for bottom 3 quintiles), but a lot of the “growth” in retail comes from cutting labor costs.
Lidl likely is 'winning' there (if indeed there's legacy union component to their pricing). They also scaled back their expansion plans. The one by us is moderately large, and newer ones (and future planned ones) are (and will be ) smaller.
Within a 3 mile radius, we have a Walmart, Lidl, Aldi, Target, Wegmans, Lowes, Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Lowes, and Harris Teeter (yes, 2 Lowes and 2 Harris Teeters). This is in North Carolina - some of these are regional chains. The Lowes and HT have historically been some of the consistently highest prices for anything, and I'm honestly baffled how people can afford to shop there regularly.
Yes, perhaps keeping a bit more money 'local' (vs that money going out of state) might be a 'good thing', somehow, but it's hard for me to justify it. Perhaps, if there's real benefit, they need to do some better PR. Or perhaps they have, and everyone else 'gets it', and I've just not heard it?
I wanted a bag of frozen cherries. Local HT - 'name brand' was $5.25. HT store brand was ~$4.25. Walmart store brand was ~$3. Target store brand was $1.89. (same sizes for all - all late 2019 prices from memory). I have a hard time justifying spending 100% more for generic brand stuff. Cheeses, milk, bread, cereals, eggs, meats - our local HT is almost always at least 50% more than the Lidl or Target or Walmart. Maybe these disparities aren't as great in other regions, and this will shake itself out eventually?
EDIT: found some HT numbers from a few years ago that indicated their net profit was closer to 3.6%. They also have a profit sharing program, which may account for aiming for a higher profit percent.
[1]https://smallbusiness.chron.com/profit-margin-supermarket-22...
If Walmart started treating their staff like Costco we’d see a lot happier staff, and pay less taxes on entitlements.
If Walmart paid their staff like Costco their prices would be high like Costco’s and there would be little reason for them to exist anymore.
For people on a budget, Costco’s prices are terrible on many basic items. The “bulk prices” in many categories (e.g. dairy) are at best the same price per unit as Walmart with the huge purchase requirement.
Costco is for middle to upper middle class incomes and Walmart is for middle to lower class incomes. If you don’t recognize the price difference between the stores, you are privileged enough to be in the former category.
I would believe that if the Waltons weren’t one of (the?) richest families in the world. They can afford to pay more but don’t as the US taxpayer is making up the difference in welfare.
Privatize the profit, socialize the cost.
Estimated Walton family wealth is $250 bill. Walmart employs 2.2 million people. Pay them all $10k more per year and the Walton wealth would be gone after a decade (ignoring the fact that losing money for years in a row would eliminate the Walton wealth much faster due to stock declines).
Walmart’s model is just not sustainable at Costco level pay.
> They can afford to pay more but don’t as the US taxpayer is making up the difference in welfare.
If you don’t like that people can get welfare on minimum wage, either eliminate welfare at that wage level or raise the minimum wage until people who make minimum wage don’t qualify.
> Privatize the profit, socialize the cost.
It is the government who decides to pay welfare at these levels. If you want to ban people from making money at those hourly rates, go ahead. But this is not a case of “socialize the cost” because being a Walmart employee making $25k + welfare is still better than being unemployed and just getting welfare.
I got that at Safeway on Market/Church in SF. But in other places I've seen Walmart and other stores' staff have been much happier and nicer. Even though these chains try to have consistent experiences across locations, there is a pretty large variability from city to city.
There’s still the whole, all very poor people shop there dynamic that isn’t going away unless someone can undercut Walmart significantly.
I almost never find an old employee at Costco, while at Walmart most of them are old or middle aged.
Though it might also be that nearly every piece of stock at a Costco will be significantly heavier than that at Walmart, making it difficult for older people who might have more in the way of back problems etc to work there.
I think it has to do with lot of older people shopping at Walmart so they feel comfortable around others. Don't know.
If I'm at a Whole Foods, the sensitivity is way at the other extreme of politeness. I wonder if anyone's ever went deep on an analysis of this sort of phenomenon.
Macy's has a similarly annoying policy. They deliberately keeping their cash registers unmanned, which they apparently tell their employees is to "avoid intimidating customers" so you have to stand around waiting or seek out an employee manually. I thought my local Macy's was simply understaffed, but since learning they do it on purpose I've decided never to go there again.
Tangentially related. In college or football team would go to old country buffet. Which has a microphone in the wall to order more from the kitchen for the staff. One of our smart ass players went up and said "we need more fried chicken". The manager caught him and scolded him. Then looked at the buffet and said "make that two orders of fried chicken" in the mic.
The store is just like a Vegas casino, every last thing has been thought out and everything is A/B tested down to a regional and sometimes city basis.
If all of their changes are focused on near-term bottom line, is it really surprising if that comes at the expense of customer/employee satisfaction and brand reputation?
Fixed income customers see things like an ultra clean speed and efficient store as 1) intimidating and 2) overhead that makes prices go up and "wastes" their money.
I can understand e.g. when I buy a TV, but a gallon of milk is ridiculous and profiling.
Any employee that stops you might be guilty of kidnapping.
https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/consumer-protection/prote...
I would much rather stop for 30 seconds than be banned from my local grocery store.
Worst case is they call the local PD who are having a bad day and want to point a gun at a black man
#7 is a separate issue though. That is a predatory practice and I'm glad I live in a state where it isn't allowed.
They're also the only store I know of that shuts down their checkouts at closing time; if you were already in line, too bad, they'll check you out tomorrow. (Of course, a lot of their stores are 24x7)
I'm still debating the merits of growing up on a Rez versus how I see my fellow humans.
Only time I see that much concentrated sadness in a store, that consistently, is when I find myself in a dying-rural-town grocery store that looks like it time-travelled from 1990. I don't remember whether those were sad places when I was growing up, mostly in those same sorts of dying rural towns. Wal-Mart wasn't, and their store function, service, cleanliness, and design all improved constantly through about '05, then abruptly reversed course and haven't stopped going downhill. Dunno what happened. Maybe Amazon happened, though that doesn't explain some of their oddly ill-looking paint color choices from the last couple re-designs.
I’ve noticed this at Walmart. However, I’ve noticed it’s worse at Target, (an arguably higher end store) where I’ve observed the queue reaching from one end of the store to the next. Interestingly, I’ve also noticed this effect on grocery chains in my area. Fry’s (Kroger) seems to have many queues open, which go quickly, whereas the higher end Safeway will have 1-2 queues open and zero open after hours.
All stores are bad with lines, until you get to really high end (like Whole Foods or Natural Grocers), but Paradoxically the more expensive stores (mid range, like Target and Safeway) are the worst offenders out of everyone. I don’t know why this is. Maybe they don’t have enough customers and not enough profit to justify more staff, or maybe they found that if the lines are long, customers will make another trip around the store and buy more stuff.
That said, it used to be, before the self-checkout area. And, when traveling, I end up popping in to Walmarts in various parts of the country now and then, and the checkout times are always a gamble.
re: #6 - I wonder if it has something to do with the aisles being there more for the convenience of the packers and movement of goods in the store, vs the convenience of shoppers. I understand your point, and do notice it sometimes, and have tried to compare it to other shops. However, in the last few years, I found myself going to shops less and less overall, so it's harder for me to remember and compare against competitors fairly.
Nothing about your list describes Walmarts in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, except perhaps the poorest parts of Dallas, which I have not personally visited.
Grapevine, Flower Mound, Roanoke, Rome, Keller, Preston Hollow Walmarts are all immaculately maintained and clean.
I'm currently working on robotics deployment for several new Amazon warehouses and I hate having to visit the already operating ones - everyone looks like they would jump out of the window like the people at Foxconn, except they don't because they know the fall wouldn't kill them.
Amazon is truly staffed with geniuses at the upper echelons... keep the peasants who make the whole operation work away from the customers, that way the customers can always feel good about buying from Amazon. Walmart doesn't have that luxury, what with it's enormous physical presence and all.
"Wow, [mid-tier jeans brand] is only $16/pair at Wal-Mart, and they're $40 when you find them on sale on [jeans brand]'s web site. What a bargain!"
... but then it turns out they're not the same thing, even if they're made to look very much like they are even down to the labelling, and in fact the manufacturer produces a separate low-end- and outlet-stores version that's much worse than their standard product.
---
This is actually an anti-pattern in their org;
They have FAILED to properly train to and address this problem, thus it persists.
Its not intentional - it is through lack of taking a focus on this aspect of their business, or looking at it - and determining they prefer/dont mind it...
Brilliant turn of phrase!
Sorry you have to mix with the “rabble”!
People want to shop with others of similar taste/preferences. They presently cater to the one of the lowest common denominators (Dollar stores could be lower, I guess), so how could they appeal to other shoppers?
That’s the crux of the question. The current stores appeal to one audience but not another.
Whole Foods has the same problem, except from the other direction. Working class folks will sneer at Whole Foods. It’s not their bag. Amazon would have to open something that caters to price conscious shoppers if they wanted to expand groceries to working class shoppers...
Furthermore, I'm wondering what shitholes these people live in or near where they actually experience this sort of thing.
The Walmarts around Keller, Texas are nothing like what's being described here... although granted, this is an upper middle class area of Texas, and unlike California, we don't allow people to steal shit out of our pharmacies with impunity, nor do we allow people to shit on our streets.
If you know their history then you understand how they got where they are.
Walmart grew in the 80s and 90s by planting itself just outside the city limits of small towns across America. They attracted the towns people with low prices and jobs. Their presence eventually shutdown every competing small business in those towns and the former purveyors of those businesses often wound up working at Walmart. Businesses that didn't directly compete often setup shop inside the Walmart leasing space from them. That is until Walmart started partnering up with larger chains and pushing those small businesses out.
At the same time Walmart was strangling small businesses in small town America, they were also putting the squeeze on suppliers. They were demanding custom products at lower prices from companies who were forced to outsource to other countries in order to meet Walmart's demands. Well known American brands like Huffy went from being proudly made in America to just being stickers slapped on products coming off the boat from China.
If you drove across the US in the 90s you'd run through empty ghost towns and as soon as you'd hit the "Now leaving..." sign for the town there'd be a Walmart Supercenter with a parking lot full of vehicles. Walmart destroyed small town America by draining towns of tax revenues and running small businesses under.
Through all of this Walmart proudly displayed Made in the USA or some other patriotic bullshit on the outside of their stores.
Yeah Walmart has an image problem, and there isn't anything they can do about it in my opinion.
Also note - Amazon is doing the exact same thing to any remaining small retailers, squeezing suppliers like crazy and intensifying the brands selling exclusively from overseas (also destroying brand reputations as fakes are absolutely rife).
Also doesn't help that the middle class has dwindled and anyone caught below the "capital gains" economic apartheid line doesn't have money anymore so even if they wanted to buy local they couldn't.
That's where Amazon hits, once a customer knows what to buy they can find it on Amazon.
Short of some breakup, or government intervention, what can be done? The system is designed to reward those who find the best market fit. The problem is, there's no brake pedal on their growth. They can absorb entire industries.
The government has an obligation to ensure negative economic costs are paid by the producers and consumers of goods and services.
An example of this would be Walmart for years relying almost exclusively on Medicaid benefits for their employees healthcare. Walmart is hardly the worst company in terms of passing economic costs on to others or future generations. But, the point is, that unless the government forces a company to pay the true costs of doing business it's always going to result in market distortions.
It's a design flaw of capitalism, which is actually easy to correct within an equitable political system. However, this is much more rare than it ought be.
Not going to comment on the ethics/politics of it, but if people like shopping alongside people in their own stratum, then they have to accept that they have to pay a premium for it (i.e. shop at Whole Foods). You can't really say "I want to shop at the discount store but I also want only other wealthy people to be there".
If you accept that premise, then perhaps Walmart doesn't have an image problem, it's simply the fact that it's the cheapest place to shop in the neighborhood, so lower income folks will more likely shop there.
Only half tongue in cheek, and completely agreeing with you.
If your wealth is such that food cost is a fairly negligible part of your expenses, USUALLY the Walmart will be further away located on less expensive real estate, roaming around the Walmart supercenter can literally take more time (both of these points are, to be fair eliminated by curbside pickup/delivery), the variety might be good but it's of foods that might not necessarily be worth the cost savings, the meat & produce might be alright but it's rarely going to be exceptional. It's not that any cook worth their salt can't go to Walmart and cook some fantastic food, it's that the real fancy store can be the path of least resistance.
I patronize both stores, tending to make runs to Walmart type stores for mostly non-perishables sold at superior prices. Honestly I feel more uncomfortable among wealthy patrons can poor ones. I can feel a miasma of snootiness around me in an upscale enough shop.
For people beyond a certain income level, a few dollars in savings aren't as attractive as shopping in a place where people seem to be more "happy". Many of these stores also tend to have an attached gourmet cafe where you can grab a "healthy" bite post/pre shopping. The whole foods in Downtown Austin even has yoga classes (an other fitness activities) on its terrace.
I agree that Walmart can be extremely unpleasant compared to a regular grocery store for many reasons.
However, I’ve found Whole Foods staff to be extremely unwelcoming unless you seem like you fit in regardless of how much money you make.
Can definitely recommend wegmans for a more upscale shopping experience (Eg fancy cheeses, meats, selection of fish) without any of that “too cool for school” factor if you’re not in an “in” group.
Edit: Trader Joe’s is also pretty cool but it reminds me a bit of Aldi.
Well, not originally, but they’re owned by Aldi Nord for a while now.
Maybe if some branded it as 'willow leaf pain relief' they'd carry it. It's natural and it rhymes!
People at Wal-mart have a bad day all the time. It's about the customer service. I have less anxiety knowing that if I do run into problems in the store, the staff would be more approachable.
> what class you are and should have shown more reverence
I didn't read the original comment this way. It sounds like you are projecting a bit
I shop at the wally all the time, and I am just calling an elitist a spade free of any strawman you want to pile on.
You're probably white and haven't experienced casual racism that exists at Wal-mart and less worldly venues
> dog whistle
> calling an elitist a spade free of any strawman you want to pile on.
Is it an elitist dog whistle when less affluent people also avoid Wal-mart on the sentiment that it's not actually a better value proposition such that customer service is a differentiating factor ? There is extreme poverty where people have to squeeze every penny out of their expenses even if it means trading their time for those pennies, but I'd hardly call a family in the middle ( below the middle class ) vying for Costco or a Target as having elitist preferences.
You're the one who sounds like an elitist white knight suggesting less affluent people have zero options and necessarily have to shop at Wal-mart. For example, Dollar Stores have great service, not actually cheaper, but is perceived as a cost saving to less affluent people.
I love you. Fight the hate!
Almost everyone in America is "working class". America no longer has a leisure class to speak of, if we ever had one. Looking at the most recent data - I forget where I saw it - but the wealthiest Americans also put in the most hours at work.
I know a lot of people have brainwashed themselves into thinking they're something they're not, but they're all wrong. If you have to go to work in the morning to maintain your lifestyle, even if you "work" for yourself, you're just a working class stiff like everyone else, you can just afford bigger shit.
If you can decide to just stop what you're doing and go attain spiritual enlightenment for the next 18 months, and literally nothing about your life, your children's lives, your grandchildren's lives, and your great-grandchildren's lives will change - you're not working class.
> Sure, it’s elitist, but people like shopping alongside people in their own stratum.
That doesn't make someone elitist, it just makes them an asshole.
It is a polite rephrasing of the now antiquated phrase: “lower class”.
In fact, the “working class” aren’t necessarily even employed.
For instance, hanging from the ceiling smack-dab in the middle of some aisles are little TVs showing you that they're recording you. And when you walk down the aisle, the little TV senses you and lights up (it's remarkably bright) so that you _have_ to notice it.
And nine times out of ten I get hassled by the LPOs on my way out—demanding to see my receipt like they're busting some sort of birthday card stealing ring.
I do get that shoplifting is a big problem for them. The (small, middle-class) city I grew up in always has a cop in the parking lot of the local Walmart because so many people steal things. In high school, kids would grab booze or energy drinks and pass it through the bars in the garden section to their friends. Or just shove it in their backpack and run. And most of the "Do you recognize this shoplifter?" posts on FB or wherever by the local PD are from the Walmart.
But I can't help but think that they're driving away the type of people they _want_ to shop there. I'll gladly drive farther and pay more to shop in a pleasant environment.
That is just the store you went to. The company crunches tons of data before they decide on store placement, and grouping like-shoppers by socioeconomic status is absolutely a goal. My hometown for example - one side of town has a Walmart that is very run down and exactly as you describe, while on the other side of town the Walmart looks like an upscale Target on the inside and an REI on the outside.
They tried the "upscale" brand online with Jet.com and it was an absolute failure. Amazon owns almost all of the non-price-first shoppers and Marc Lore doesn't know how to run a business without oversight.
The shuttering happened because the website was racking up seven-figure monthly Azure bills and bringing in five-figure revenue. Marc just couldn't figure out how to drive traffic without all his domains he sold to Amazon (soap.com, diapers.com, etc).
When I was very young, I liked talking to my dad about possible business ideas and how to make millions of dollars so I could buy a castle for our family to live in when I grew up (yeah, yeah, I was a kid). One evening, after proposing yet another crazy idea (I can't for the life of me remember what it was), my dad sat me down and asked me which kind of customer I thought Walmart would prefer to have: 1 customer that spends $100 or 100 customers that spend $1. I naively answered "The $100 customer, because it's a guaranteed higher amount!" He corrected me, saying that they'd prefer 100x $1 customers for two reasons: 1) there will always be a market for them and 2) it's less detrimental to lose a customer when each one pays $1 than it is to lose your only customer.
I don't think attracting the average Joe instead of the elitist is a bug, it's a feature.
The thing about America is that you honestly cannot tell the social status of a person based on appearance alone. The middle class is large and we value frugality and humility.
I think of this as a collective tendency: rich or poor, when you go to Wal-Mart you just wear whatever you're wearing.
I don't know if you have ever heard of Chris Arnade but he is an ex Wall Streeter who wrote about the "McDonald's Test," which probably lines up with Wal-Mart too.
"Eventually I came up with what I call the McDonald’s test. The broad thesis of my book is that our society sorts people into what I call the front row and the back row – the privileged class to which I used to belong, who are financially secure and live in safe neighborhoods with good schools and public services – and everybody else. The test is to ask a person: how do you view McDonald’s? In my experience, the answer usually reveals whether someone belongs to the front or back row."
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/econ...
You walk in through a one-way turnstile, they have a permanent police presence, clear loss prevention people randomly throughout the store, and someone doing loss prevention just after check out.
I'm sure other stores in our area have loss prevention, but they hide it much better. WalMart is the only store where I feel like I'm being scrutinized for wanting to buy the products they sell.
That doesn't bother me. I'm not so elitist that I need to always be with people who are me same class as me.
What's more important is that the people catering to me make a living wage. Or, to put it differently, are comfortable with what they are paid without relying on government assistance?
The only kind of stores that I avoid because of the customers are liquor stores where half the drivers in the parking lot are drunk.
Walmart jobs in my fairly HCOL area still start at $12 an hour.
Where I live (a decent sized metro), their stock collection beats all other retail stores in the area. They'll often have SKUs for products I can't find anywhere else. As an example, I have a spray carpet cleaner from what is likely the best selling brand in the country. When it runs out, I want to get a solution refill, not buy a whole new spray. Walmart is the only general purpose store in the city that carries it. All other stores carry just the spray version, which costs about double. Target used to be my go-to place for this kind of stuff, but even they've stopped carrying it.
Their fresh produce sucks, but for everything else, they often have good selection and quality. And with good prices. A few other examples:
- OTC Medicine/supplements: If you're trying to get one of the well known "alternative" brands (e.g. vegetarian tablets), their prices are much cheaper - perhaps half of that in any other local store.
- Perfumes: It's the same perfume as you'd get at Macy's, Nordstrom, etc, but usually at 20-50% off their prices. Reason? They source these perfumes from the Asian market. Perfume manufacturers cannot sell in Asia at the prices they charge in the US, so they sell it cheaper there (again, from all my research, it's the same perfume - not a lower quality one). So Walmart simply "imports" them back in from Asia.
I rarely shop at Wal-mart. It's not near me, and I go there only when I simply can't find what I need at another local store. It certainly has its down sides and legitimate criticisms, but I've begun to appreciate the positives to it.
Based on what the article says from the memo, a lot if their issues stem from changing shopping behaviors and a desire for more convenience-- such as curbside pickup-- that Walmart has had difficulty scaling up fast enough to meet demand.
This is more subjective, but in every country I go to, I visit a "cheap supermarket chain store" and look at the people working there. Do they look happy? Do they look healthy? Do they look tired? Switzerland was amazing on that front.
That's kinda what Sam's Club is, though Sam's is competing against Costco
Sam Walton is the originator of both Sam's Club and Wal(ton)mart.
Sam's competes more with stores like BJ's and Brandsmart than Costco, which is really in a league of its own.
People who don’t like Walmart won’t try it and people who do like Walmart will be pissed it’s not a Walmart just a grocery store.
It's no wonder that people who can afford to shop elsewhere do.
Elitist or not, wouldn't this advice simply move them from one stratum to another?
Best Buy is the most confusing of these as the receipt checker is stationed about 3 feet from the last register by the door watching you get rung up and pay.
Eh, I think the problem isn't even "lower class" it's "I don't want to shop at a store with a meth lab"[1]
How does walmart begin to fix problems like that? IDK. Even Kmart back in the day didn't have that sort of image problem. Heck, other brands like Kroger or albertsons/safeway don't have that problem. It's a pretty unique problem to the walmart brand.
Oddly enough, Asda (walmart's UK brand name) doesn't have the same image problem. It really is a problem unique to the US walmart brand.
[1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/03/meth-labs-in-wal...
In other countries their micromanagement made them fail. Like in Germany, where it's the place where it crashed and burned the worse.
I’ve gone into their stores. Their stock assortment isn’t bad compared to the competition. In fact, aside from Whole Foods on the organic/bio side of things, they measure up very well and better compared to their competition. They are more of a hypermart where you can do one stop shopping ala Carrefour.
The issues I see are: very drab color palette. Working class shoppers. Sure, it’s elitist, but people like shopping alongside people in their own stratum.
They could likely address this by having a second more upscale brand.