Nazareth.
Wikipedia, if I may ask, how the heck is 356 people a "city"?
"Slave labor" is very rarely literally true in the case of manufactured goods. They're paid what would amount to a pittance over here...
...but just how much do you suppose they were making before Wal-Mart or whoever the evil corporation du jour is took their supply business to them? Oh, but Wal-Mart's also evil because it refuses to fix its prices to match everybody else... and that's, uh... gosh, I can barely say this with a straight face... "anti competitive." Yeah. Refusing to charge the exact same price as everybody else in town is "anti competitive." People really need to learn their history... in previous generations, the champions of the impovershed American working class fought against price fixing. Oh, but... the grocery store that was the only store in town and everybody went there because it's the only grocery store in town and they've always charged what they wanted... because it's the only grocery store in town? And the only pharmacy and the only hardware store, too? They don't want Wal-Mart to come in... because... -chuckle-... Wal-Mart is a "monopoly." If Wal-Mart wasn't there, not only would we not have the option of taking advantage of their low prices (which they procure on our behalf by bargaining strenuously... something the American consumers can no longer do for themselves... with everybody they do business with, both with their suppliers and their employees)... but everybody else's prices would go up because they wouldn't have anybody to compete with. Wal-Mart is also using the same clout it's used to bargain for low prices now to bargain for the environment. For instance: at the normal rate of commercial fishing, the oceans would be depleted within our life time. This is an undeniable fact, but the governments of the world can't do jack about it because they are accountable to their people, which include fishermen, who get on the radio and TV and say, "If you try to restrict how much we can fish, we can't make a living."... never mind that they couldn't make any sort of living if there's nothing left to fish for, and the governments say, "Uh, okay." Wal-Mart, on the other hand, buys 30% of the fish that are caught... when they say, "Look, we plan on being at this for a loooooong time. You guys need to switch to sustainable fishing practices or we can't keep buying from you. We'll put the money in to upgrade your operation and hire the experts to help you get it done."... the commercial fishing fleets have to listen. Wal-Mart's out a bit of money, but they take the long view: better to still have the fish in the future. It's not like you can say "Well, we'll just eat chicken and beef." Take the fish out of the picture and we no longer have enough meat production to feed ourselves. Wal-Mart's also pushing the energy saver light bulbs... the freaky flourescent ones that last 5, 6, or even 8 years? A lot of people assume that it's because they cost more, that Wal-Mart makes more money. Nope. Wal-Mart operates on volume... you buy more of the cheaper bulbs, they get more money. Plus, burnt out light bulbs are one of the things that normally send folks to the store like clockwork, "and while I'm here I might as well pick up a few things"... so the less often your bulbs burn out, the less trips you make to the store. Why would Wal-Mart do all this? It could be utterly selfless... or it could be utterly selfish, in that they want to make sure there's still a world to do business with in thirty years. But of course, none of that matters because Wal-Mart devastates Main Street, USA, right? Take a look at what happens when Wal-Mart comes to town: business... even mom-and-pop ones... that have something to offer the consumer other than the "you might not like us, but we're the only store in town" mentality end up doing more business, because the Wal-Mart draws people from out of town and even the people in town have more money to spend on luxuries from the added jobs and the lowered prices. ...and here's the final proof that Wal-Mart in a town isn't a bad thing: when a town protests to keep Wal-Mart out, Wal-Mart goes and sets up shop in a town that does want them. What happens next? The town that welcomed Wal-Mart gets the economic boost, and the one that fought Wal-Mart complains that Wal-Mart is "punishing" them and "rubbing it in their face". :P They all wish they had gotten the Wal-Mart after the fact, never mind that their own actions kept it out of town. | |
Right now in town, there was a big issue with Wal-mart. And I can't say it is true or not, but I'll pass it on. My local news paper had an article about Wal-Mart, stating that "Wal-Mart Agents" would frequent many small town stores and shops and record their prices. Then our Wal-Mart would adjust their own prices, forcing the other stores to either adjust to match Wal-Mart or cheaper. Well apparently, these same small town stores tried to do the same thing, go into Wal-Mart and check out their prices, but once "Wal-Mart Agents" discovered their intent, they kicked them out. The news paper states there is a sign in Wal-Mart stating a rule about recording prices in their Wal-Mart. It doesn't help, that after all of this, our local small town meat market started mud slinging campaigns against Wal-Mart in our local news paper and the news paper has clearly stated they have done these ads free of charge to fight against the "Wal-Mart Tearney". The guy who runs the Wal-Mart here saw these ads and confronted the owner of the Meat Market and actually got into a fist fight. Now I am not saying this to be negative on Wal-Mart, as a matter of fact I do all my shopping only at Wal-Mart, partly because I feel the town is giving them a bad rap, but I thought I would share the story about the evil Wal-Mart in my town. On a side note, the news paper actually did refer to the Wal-Mart employees as "Wal-Mart Agents". | |
Was this actually in the paper, or did you hear from somebody that told you it was in the paper? I'd be interested in knowing that... and if your paper has an online arm, is the article available there?
'cause that sounds like serious urban legend territory to me. From what I've heard, Wal-Mart's prices are set regionally, not for each individual store. They do have a prominently advertised program whereby they will match price advertised in any competing store if you bring in the advertisement... and there's signs posted stating that fact. I've never seen a sign saying "It is not permitted to record our prices." Given that they stand by their prices as competitive, and vow to honor any competitor's price, it would be counterproductive for them to stop people from checking out their prices. (Um, in fact... given that Wal-Mart, like every other store, distributes advertising circulars which, um, advertise the prices...) If the person in question was a customer, the customer would find out, "Hey, (for most things), Wal-Mart has the lower price. I'll keep shopping here."... and if the person works for another store... Well... ...the criticism usually leveled against Wal-Mart is that it's impossible for the other stores to match their prices... so this story just flat out doesn't make any sense. [EDIT] After a little reflection, I can kind of see where this idea might have come from. Wal-Mart does indeed scout out the area where it's thinking of building a store (wouldn't it be foolish to build the store first and THEN find out if there's the demand for it?), which does include looking at what businesses are already there and getting data on prices... but not so they can adjust theirs to beat them. It's a foregone conclusion that Wal-Mart will have the lower prices on most things. However, the local prices already being cut to the bone is a good indicator that the market's not going to sustain another large store. Local prices being bloated, on the other hand, indicates there's not enough competition... and plenty of room for a big box retailer, if the other data supports it. I could see how people, lacking real understanding of economics and only working with the ideas that 1) Wal-Mart is evil, 2) Wal-Mart undersells everybody, and 3) Wal-Mart scopes out the competition before moving in, might come to the conclusion that Wal-Mart's targetting their prices just to specifically beat out the stores around them. The "We'll match any competitor's ad!" thing, of course, plays into it... even though it's the consumer who wins. | |
From someone with "inside" knowledge, I can verify that "comp shopping", as it is referred, is an actual practice...
Not only does every Wal*Mart store have the task of browsing competitor's ads to undercut their sales (before anyone ever asks; this isn't part of that "We'll match any competitor's advertised price" business... that only catches the ones they miss in the preemptive strike), Wal*Mart also sends employees ("agents", ha... the proper term for a Wal*Mart employee is "associate") into area stores to record prices on various items to undersell those as well... In fact, Wal*Marts even have a specific tool for this now (before, it was done the old fashioned way with pen and paper)... They've got a little handheld device that they sneak with them into other stores to record prices (they scan a barcode, type in the price, and it keeps everything stored until they return to Wal*Mart to upload the prices and adjust their own on those UPCs) And I'm not referring to the handheld scanning devices they use inside the Wal*Mart store... They have another, even smaller, guy specifically designed for the job... Pricing within all Wal*Marts only begins with a regional default for items... It is then fine tuned directly from information gathered from the local market on a store-by-store basis for a large number of products... Employees in Wal*Marts are also instructed to notify management of suspected "counter attacks" (not the Wal*Mart term, but it fits the idea)...lol I don't recall any signs being posted, but I wouldn't doubt their existence... | |
I'll file that under "interesting in true." :P As of this momemnt, you're still just some guy on the internet saying so, but my curiousity's piqued enough that I want to look into it now.
Given the very real difficulty that local stores have matching Wal-Mart's ruthelss price efficiency to begin with, I have a hard time seeing the necessity here... though I guess, if anything, they'd raise their razor-thin profit margins by looking at the competitor's price and raising their price from the base until it's just under it, rather than lowering their base price to " ". Either way... as a consumer, I still find it hard to muster moral outrage at a business going out of their way to make sure the price they offer me on everything under their roof is the lowest I could possibly pay. People used to haggle over prices, until they got the cheapest one possible. Bar codes and price tags did away with that. Now, the only thing we can do is comparison shop... and the enshrined local monopolies want us to believe that even that's a bad thing. | |
No I read this in our local paper. But the term paper is very vaguely used, as is it more of a self printed magazine the town gets for free every week.
If I wanted to get an actual real newspaper I would have to special order one from Oklahoma City. | |
Go tell that to the old woman. I was just getting to the point that people are entitled to their own opinions. A lot of Wal-Mart goods come from so called "sweat-shops" and maybe that's her reason.
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SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:
From someone with "inside" knowledge, I can verify that "comp shopping", as it is referred, is an actual practice... That is the biggest thing of bs i've ever read. | |
Ah, okay. I was thinking it sounded a little one-sided for a paper... but that would be why.
Upon reflection, the idea's not that shocking or sinister. They're already committed to charging the lowest price, so why not do their homework? A web search for the term "comp shopping" (that SSGX used for it) turns up enough links to make it apparent it's an industry wide practice... though I'd believe Wal-Mart's more ruthlessly efficient about it, as they are about just about everything else. It's just when it's presented in terms of "Wal-Mart sends agents...", like it's some big covert paramilitary op performed by ninja pirate bears, or something, that my bunk-sensor goes off. Interestingly enough, I found links about Costco doing it against Sam's Club (a Wal-Mart subsidiary) before turning up the ones against Wal-Mart. | |
Hedgemistress wrote:
Oh, but Wal-Mart's also evil because it refuses to fix its prices to match everybody else... and that's, uh... gosh, I can barely say this with a straight face... "anti competitive." Yeah. Refusing to charge the exact same price as everybody else in town is "anti competitive." By the way, Penn & Teller's Bullshit show is doing an episode on WalMart this season...in which they will defend WalMart. | |
I actually had a large debate with the old woman, even calling her a crazy old crow. My roommate was all like, dude your going to get us evicted. But I don't think she could evict us for that.
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It would be funny (not ha-ha funny, at least not for you) if she evicted you over your opinion while seemingly protesting something on human rights grounds.
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Hedgemistress wrote:
I still find it hard to muster moral outrage at a business going out of their way to make sure the price they offer me on everything under their roof is the lowest I could possibly pay. It depends on their long term goals. If they're doing it to drive the competition out, gain control, then slowly raise their prices it's easy to get mad at them. It doesn't sound like they plan on doing that, in fact they seem to have caught onto the idea that people spend the same amount of money when the prices are cheaper, but someone gets fired someone gets hired and their objectives could all change. If that happens it's easy to say that the other shops will just re-open, but I can't see a bank giving a small business a start-up loan so they can compete with something that large. Once you do get the store open you've still got to get people in it. Even with lower prices that's hard because they're already shopping at the place that has everything. They wont leave for just one thing. This is where the monopoly issue comes from. It's not that it's simply a monopoly it's that it's an extremely strong monopoly. Once they're monopoly is in place it's almost impossible to re-establish Main St and take it down. I would also imagine that some people would be annoyed that Wal*Mart effectively gains control over what comes into their town. I know I'd be annoyed if Wal*Mart didn't stock Nintendo products but still managed to beat out the local gaming stores. As of this momemnt, you're still just some guy on the internet saying so, but my curiousity's piqued enough that I want to look into it now. SSGX is a Wal*Mart Guru. | |
If the area over which Wal-Mart was establishing its dominance was smaller, the monopoly claims would hold more water... but being a national chain, the landscape changes too fast for them to be a true monopoly. There's just not enough places that are tiny enough for them to take over completely... yet also worth building a Wal-Mart there... and their ability to undercut depends on their ability to spread losses out.
So if they suddenly abandoned their low price tactics, the majority of their stores would lose business, and the ones that have no effective competition remaining would not be able to engage in a price war with anybody new who did want to come to town. As for Wal-Mart controlling what comes to town... that would also only happen in a tiny market that's barely able to sustain a Wal-Mart, and that's where they avoid building (because then there's no room for them to grow that particular business.) Every category of goods they don't provide is an opportunity for another business, a niche in which they can't dominate. Interestingly, since you chose video games as the random example: the biggest two Wal-Mart Supercenters in town here both have a (non-Wal-Mart) video game store as one of the satellites in the adjacent strip mall. Wal-Mart sells shoes, but I can't remember the last time I saw one that didn't have a separate shoe store nearby, too. Maybe it's just because... as I've said elsewhere... the normal laws of market saturation break down in Omaha, Nebraska... but I do travel, and shop while traveling, and there seems plenty of evidence for the theory that proximity to a Wal-Mart boosts business rather than destroying it. Assuming, of course, that said business is actually offering something to consumers beyond being the "only game in town." :P | |
Well, games and shoes are two places that Wal-Mart fails horribly at. They sell crappy shoes and don't offer the same level of support as the game stores. I buy my games at gamestop because I like being able to ask questions about the game before I buy it(The electronics area of Wal-Mart is always packed and there is around -1 employees serving the customers).
Big companies, not just Wal-Mart do hurt the ma and pa shops. Often, they are going as low as they can on price. Unfortunately, the masses don't appreciate quality and true customer service these days. This, of course, is not Wal-Mart's fault, they just filled the gap that opened up. Anything to save a buck, aye? I know, you can't blame Wal-Mart on that, but it does get damn annoying when you see it happening. Wal-Mart moving in does kill off a lot of local shops. Hell, even those shoe shops and game stores you mentioned are big chains of their own. They just setup shop right next to Wal-Marts, because it tends to be profitable. I really can't complain about Wal-Mart though. The nearest one is about 20 miles away, in a local city, and I'm fine with that. It is close enough I can run to it if needed, but far enough away that we still have local shops for the basics. The fact that "Mount Pleasant Hardware" is still in business despite a Lowes and Home Depot being about 20 miles away proves that the distance is good. Sure Mt. Pleasant Hardware costs a bit more, but it is local and I can ask the guy at the counter for help on pretty much anything, and he always knows exactly where everything is. If it's after hours for the local store or they don't have what I need, I'll run up to big chains, but otherwise I enjoy the level of support I get from the local store that the bigger stores are missing. That said, small shops like that in the city with the Wal-Mart/other big chains doesn't have these shops anymore. It did close them down. Not because of the local shop's bloated prices but rather Wal-Mart's ability to reduce their price to pretty much null. | |
CaptFalcon33035 I see how it is now, I speak of something that hits close to home, so right away you get offended because my views differ from your own. I could see you right now, I bet your like my 90 year old landlord, she won't buy anything from Walmart and she won't buy anything unless it is made in America.
What? I never got offended by anything. I don't even know what you're talking about. And maybe your 90 year old landlord has a reason not to buy anything that's not made in America: it's not called racism, nationalism, or hate. It's called anti-slave labor. I hope you aren't beating her up about that.