I've seen people (whether they be college students or just people living paycheck to paycheck) talking about how they only have e.g. $5 USD to spend on groceries for the next two weeks (because that's how much they have in their bank account, and that's when payday is).
If your choices are "something you can pay for at the dollar store at a less-than-optimal unit price" or "something you literally cannot buy because its purchase price exceeds the number in your bank account" then you really don't have a choice.
Poor people don't want dollar stores; they just want to survive.
What a knee-jerk sensationalist review of the article. It makes a fair point about why some consumers like the stores, and others welcome its convenience. Is that some major controversy? In fact much of the article could be taken as positive (pro-capitalistic) review of their strategy, a case study in making lots of money the old fashioned way.
> "Count on customers ... not doing the math" with a quote that "admits" this, but not exactly. Messy way to explain it.
> "Center their entire business modal around this dependency" > Maps of low income areas
Meh. Any one of those (cept maybe strongarm) by themselves isn't remarkable. Together, it's reasonable to wonder about anti-capitalism (exploit the poor?) undertones, if you're senstive to that kind of thing. Calling that reaction a "knee-jerk sensationalist review" seems over-the-top to me.
No, they really don't. They want high quality goods just like everybody else. Poor people also want food with good nutrition. But they aren't able to afford those things because the modern interpretation of capitalism is "exploit the poor to the maximum possible extent." You can be against this without being anticapitalist.