Comments on: Shoppers Say "What Anti-Walmart Campaign?"

By: JohnDewey

JohnDewey — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 12:46:46 +0000

“Wal-Mart is shooting itself in the foot long-term by focusing on price to the exclusion of everything else”

I’m not so sure they totally ignore quality. But their emphasis on price has been working for about five decades. I wouldn’t call that shooting themselves in the foot.

“The thing is that Wal-Mart can’t win on price point alone.”

I think they already did win. And they’re still winning. How many empty WalMart parking lots have you seen lately? WalMart now has about a 30% share of the grocery market here in Dallas-Fort Worth. I think its share was 8% five years ago. WalMart is now number two in consumer electronics sales, and will not be satisfied until it overtakes Best Buy.

Argue all you want about the flaws in WalMart’s strategy. The evidence says they’re doing just fine.

By: triticale

triticale — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 22:27:15 +0000

The thing is that Wal-Mart can’t win on price point alone. Anyplace urban that you find a Wal-Mart you are likely to find a Big Lots and/or a Dollar Tree opening up nearby.

Family Dollar, also operating on price, has a completely different strategy. Here in the inner city of Milwaukee I have two of them within walking distance (east and west of me) and three within 5 minutes drive (north and south).

By: Beef Jezos

Beef Jezos — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 02:10:38 +0000

Good point about differing quality. A few years ago, after buying a new house, I decided to invest in carpentry hand and power tools. Before making the purchase at Home Depot, I went to check out the prices at Wal-mart. Yes, it had cheaper tools but it looked like stuff that would fall apart after a single use. Needless to say, I went to HD for all of my purchases.

By: Shivering Timbers

Shivering Timbers — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 00:04:29 +0000

Why even bother running a campaign?

Wal-Mart is shooting itself in the foot long-term by focusing on price to the exclusion of everything else, including quality, selection, and intangible value.

They are gradually, inexorably making themselves synonymous with “cheap junk.”

In fact, because of Wal-Mart’s unrelenting price pressure, some companies have two different versions of the same brand: the regular version, and a cheaper Wal-Mart version. That might not be the wisest strategy either, but meanwhile consumers are gradually figuring out that the ACME Widget they bought at Wal-Mart isn’t as good as the (seemingly identical) ACME Widget they bought at Target for just a few cents more.

Sooner or later that strategy will come back to bite them. Look what happened to K-Mart.