[HN Gopher] Leaked Walmart memo reveals competitive threats
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Leaked Walmart memo reveals competitive threats
Author : prostoalex
Score : 238 points
Date : 2021-06-04 15:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| I don't shop at Walmart for three reasons:
|
| 1. They always have boxes of un-stocked products stacked in the
| aisles, making it hard to navigate my shopping cart through the
| store.
|
| 2. Their food selection isn't as good as other local retailers.
|
| 3. The Walmart near me locks the door near the handicap parking
| after 10:00 pm, even though they are open all night. I've been
| forced on multiple occasions to walk all the way to the other end
| of the store to get out and then walk all the way back to my car
| again, which is painful for me and why I have a handicap tag in
| the first place.
|
| Two of those issues seem fairly easy to fix, yet they never do.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think Wal*Mart has an image problem.
|
| 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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Working class shoppers. Sure, it's elitist, but people like
| shopping alongside people in their own stratum.
|
| 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...
| raverbashing wrote:
| I wonder if/how Asda got out of the "countryside" style of
| management of Walmart
|
| In other countries their micromanagement made them fail. Like
| in Germany, where it's the place where it crashed and burned
| the worse.
| JTbane wrote:
| Walmart is also one of the few stores that interrogate you on
| the way out as to what you purchased. Just not a good look.
| Terretta wrote:
| Best Buy checks receipts, Costco checks receipts.
|
| 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.
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| Costco, Sams Club and the like have you sign a contract for
| membership that requires you to show the receipt upon exit.
| Walmart, Target, etc. are governed by the state, county,
| and city laws. Most states allow you to ignore them and
| keep walking unless the theft prevention is activated.
| protomyth wrote:
| Best Buy also like to hire actual cops for their security.
| It's a nice part time and the employee discount was good.
| Did make my brother breathe a bit easier when he worked
| there.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Working class shoppers. Sure, it's elitist, but people like
| shopping alongside people in their own stratum.
|
| Elitist or not, wouldn't this advice simply move them from one
| stratum to another?
| late2part wrote:
| Maybe. Or not?
|
| http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/paris.metro.minimal.txt
| ivalm wrote:
| That's why OP proposed segmenting into several store brands
| (that would cater to different stratums).
| galgalesh wrote:
| When I visited the US, I went to Walmart just to see how bad it
| was. I visited the "sick and dead fish" aisle. Incomprehensible
| how that's even allowed, but ok.
|
| 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.
| totalZero wrote:
| > Working class shoppers. Sure, it's elitist, but people like
| shopping alongside people in their own stratum.
|
| 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...
| lttlrck wrote:
| Fantastic article. Thank you.
| handrous wrote:
| Observations about the nearest Wal-Mart:
|
| 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.
| pengaru wrote:
| Most of what you're observing is simply a reflection of the
| area demographics.
|
| 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.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I don't know why this is downvoted and I don't know why I
| didn't think of this comparison.
|
| 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.
| porknubbins wrote:
| I was going to say Walmart has exactly the feel of a US
| public institution like a prison, DMV, immigration and
| customs etc. You can get a good deal but as soon as any
| human effort to provide service is required all bets are
| off, and the whole place feels vaguely hostile.
| pengaru wrote:
| Right, the DMV has a monopoly on a service most adults
| require. There are competitors for simple services like
| registration renewal @ AAA, but that's less available in
| smaller communities. So when you go to a DMV somewhere
| there's only one DMV serving the region, it's a pretty
| good cross-section of local society.
|
| 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.
| mc32 wrote:
| Profit per dollar for grocery stores is about half of one
| cent for every dollar of revenue. Shrinkage eats into
| that profit very quickly.
|
| This is why Walgreens is closing stores in SF. They
| cannot survive with the rampant unprosecuted shoplifting
| in SF.
| ipaddr wrote:
| That profit margin sounds very off. Is there a reference
| you are using to determine that? For an average $200 bill
| the store makes 1 dollar?
| mc32 wrote:
| Depends on the outfit, some are better than others, but
| this source[1] puts the ave at 2.2%. I knew an mgr at one
| of these and they told me 0.5% to 1%.
|
| [1]https://smallbusiness.chron.com/profit-margin-
| supermarket-22...
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Every time I hear people talking about "grocery store
| margins" the numbers get smaller and smaller, and I
| suspect "Hollywood accounting" may be behind some of the
| numbers people are thinking/repeating.
|
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is pretty easy to search for 10-K for all the big
| retail companies. They all show sub 5% profit margins,
| frequently in the 2% to 3% range. It is a pretty cut
| throat business.
|
| 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.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I did reference looking up numbers for a regional chain -
| net profit was 2.3% - this is still > 4x higher than
| 0.5%. I don't doubt some operate (for a while) at a sub
| 1% profit, but have to imagine those end up closing down
| eventually. Per the article I linked to, there was
| reference to smaller operations that focus on 'upscale'
| services may be north of 5% net profits (but are likely
| doing less volume overall).
|
| 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.
| vt240 wrote:
| I would have to guess, that Walgreens is going out of
| business, because they are the one store which hasn't
| ever improved their POS methodology beyond what we used
| to find in Sears, or Rite-Aid, holy cow, I've not
| forgotten, what did they used to be called ? Lol. I go to
| Walgreens to buy cigarettes because I know and live
| around the checkers who work there, but it is always a
| complete disaster. Today, was a perfect example. They
| "found" a device on the pin pad, and it took 10 minutes
| to find people in the store to man another register, then
| look at it, make sure it wasn't compromised, and there
| were 15 people in line. But par for the course in there.
| There will be 10 people lined up at the front, and
| they'll still man cosmetic and photo stations with no
| customers, and never really reposition employees. I don't
| get mad anymore. I go in and know what I'm in for. IC3
| .... IC3 ..... IC3 ....
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I don't think it fits quite as tightly in that description.
| I've been to many many walmarts and exactly one hasn't felt
| sad.
|
| 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.
| jxramos wrote:
| yep, I've shifted buying such locked up things online for
| in store pickup. It was totally annoying to have such a
| drag on time buzzing someone repeatedly to come and
| unlock. They should actually post a notice on the locked
| cabinets saying, "avoid the wait, order these products
| online for instore pickup"
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| My closest Walmart is in a town of 20,000 or so. There's
| also a Target a few blocks away. The people that shop at
| either could not be more different. I don't think I've ever
| seen anyone above 350 lbs at the Target. Walmart? Probably
| every time I've been in there.
| toast0 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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)
| jcims wrote:
| Broke people need to shop too.
| protomyth wrote:
| GP probably should avoid shopping on the 1st in the US too.
| Be a shame to run into those EBT people. They hold up the
| line with coupons also.
|
| I'm still debating the merits of growing up on a Rez versus
| how I see my fellow humans.
| handrous wrote:
| Only three of my seven observations are about the
| shoppers. Only one of those three isn't a choice: seeming
| sad, at a much higher rate than at other stores--shit,
| even Dollar General shoppers don't look as down as Wal-
| Mart shoppers, though, given the rest of my list, maybe
| they just look sad because they're at Wal-Mart. Dollar
| General's fun (for me, dunno about anyone else who's
| there). Wal-Mart is... exhausting.
|
| 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.
| jxramos wrote:
| There's something to #6. I agree it's pronounced at Walmarts.
| I've observed the same lack of sensitivity when going to a
| Costco in a poor side of town vs a more well to do, I've used
| that repeated experience as an Apples to Apples comparison.
| The shoppers in the poorer part demonstrate poor personal
| spatial habits and being oblivious to blocking others or
| other actions that demonstrate blinders and indifference to
| being in the presence of other people and general shopping
| etiquette. Blocking products, aisles, not yielding enough
| space, not making eye contact when you're about to intersect
| paths. It's nothing super egregious and extreme but it's
| noticeable, and I'm sure probably measurable too if one had a
| body cam and documented situation A vs B over a several trips
| and itemized all the strange encounters.
|
| 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.
| Tarsul wrote:
| It's a true point albeit a delicate one. I have a colleague
| who is not the brightest (not a developer ;)) and what I've
| noticed with him is that there's something of a
| misunderstanding of social contexts in that he interpretes
| things others do as in bad faith when they're anything but
| and which is why in such social contexts he's constantly
| agitated. So he's simply missing the empathy or emotional
| intelligence to see things from the viewpoint of another
| person. He'd be one of the people being annoyed that others
| don't make room for him but also in the same vein he'd be
| one of those persons not watching out for others simply
| because he'd have his head full of thinking about himself
| and what he wants to buy, he simply wouldn't have the
| mental capability to think about other shoppers in that
| moment.
| jejones3141 wrote:
| Here in far west West Des Moines, they have LOTS of checkout
| lines, which once had a fair number of people behind the
| registers. Now, you're lucky if two of them have people. I
| think they are really nudging you to go through the self-
| checkout or to order via the web and either pick it up or
| have it delivered. The number of aisles occupied by people
| either stocking or shopping for online orders also seriously
| encourages you to go away and order online.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also, it doesn't quite help that their color palette is
| fluorescent white and blue, which is something that evokes,
| say, a dreary clinical setting, and not necessarily somewhere
| you want to shop.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Always (tm)
| loonster wrote:
| With the low cri fluorescent lights.
| mike_d wrote:
| Longer lines and things like the occasional light bulb burned
| out psychologically made people think they were getting a
| better deal.
|
| 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.
| nine_k wrote:
| I suppose that the long lines go next to aisles with some
| last-minute stuff like candy, chewing gum, small toys, etc,
| which the bored people in the line have to see and may feel
| a craving to grab. If not them, then their children who
| experience boredom more acutely.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| no, it's just a burned out lightbulb.
| crznp wrote:
| I believe it, but what were they trying to optimize?
|
| 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?
| mike_d wrote:
| Walmart ultimately measures everything against lifetime
| customer value. They don't really care about maximizing
| revenue on a specific trip because most people come in to
| the store with a fixed budget of what they can spend
| anyway - but they sure as heck want you to return.
|
| 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.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| > They've obviously carefully tuned their check out staffing
| so that the lines are always long.
|
| 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.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I gotta say that either your Walmart is worse than any I've
| ever been to or you're in your own head a bit.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| The one nearer me has a great self-checkout area. I _usually_
| prefer self-checkout, and my wait is rarely longer than 1
| minute. I don 't shop there often - perhaps 2x per month for
| some specific items, but long checkout is never an issue.
|
| 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.
| samstave wrote:
| >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.
|
| ---
|
| 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...
| refurb wrote:
| It's funny seeing many posts on HN rallying against
| capitalism, decrying the cycle of poverty and food deserts
| and then see someone complain about seeing poor people at
| Walmart.
|
| Sorry you have to mix with the "rabble"!
| mc32 wrote:
| I think you lost the context. Wal*Mart is threatened by
| other retailers. Why might they be losing foot
| traffic/customers/sales?
|
| 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...
| cbozeman wrote:
| Jesus, tell me about it.. the entitlement in this post is
| un-fucking-believable.
|
| 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.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Then you live in, or near, a shithole.
|
| 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.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| >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.
|
| 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.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I think that's their public justification. The reality is
| there's a camera pointed at each one and a couple of pool
| cashiers that run to any as needed.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I'm sure it's a lie too. They probably found they could
| save money by understaffing their store and/or customers
| would buy more stuff if they have to wait around more.
| I'm sure it works on one scale, but on the other hand
| they seem to be confused about why they are losing
| customers to online shopping or other stores. I'm sure
| I'm not the only person to stop using them.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Once, as a child, I grabbed the phone behind the counter,
| hit the PA button, and requested a cashier at our section.
| It worked! Probably wouldn't go over so well as an adult,
| though.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I've done this as an adult. They got mad but I just
| ignored it and said "are you going to check me out" and
| they did.
|
| 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.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Honestly if I'm ever dragged there by someone else I'll
| try it and report back.
| xwdv wrote:
| I guarantee that if Amazon was a physical retail location it
| would look exactly the same.
| cbozeman wrote:
| It would look worse.
|
| 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.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Probably worse. Paint is such a frill. As is lighting when
| you're not in an aisle. And when you are, why not light
| upward from below? Cheaper to change the bulbs then.
| [deleted]
| edgyquant wrote:
| #3 really irks me, because they don't check everyone's
| receipts. I was stopped and asked for a receipt two days ago
| for a gallon of milk I had in the cart because it "wasn't in
| a bag" while other people walked past.
|
| I can understand e.g. when I buy a TV, but a gallon of milk
| is ridiculous and profiling.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I think this is a sign of a regional monopoly, like when
| the cable company gives you a six hour window for a service
| call. It probably isn't worth the small amount of theft you
| stop to alienate customers (otherwise grocers in Los
| Angeles would do it) by checking receipts. But if you are
| the only affordable store in town you don't really have to
| worry about alienating customers.
| late2part wrote:
| In most states in the US (all?) you are not obligated to
| stop and show your receipt. It may be polite, and you may
| do it, but you are not required to do so. For membership
| stores, it may be a condition of membership, but it still
| may not be legally required.
|
| Any employee that stops you might be guilty of kidnapping.
|
| https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/consumer-
| protection/prote...
| khuey wrote:
| Yep, just keep walking.
| adrr wrote:
| Just say no. They won't/can't stop you. Costco has it in
| their membership agreement but stores that aren't
| memberships; you didn't agree to it and you have no
| obligation to show it. Worst case you get banned.
| thekyle wrote:
| > Worst case you get banned.
|
| I would much rather stop for 30 seconds than be banned
| from my local grocery store.
| eropple wrote:
| They're not going to ban you for saying no. This is
| pretty well settled stuff.
| adrr wrote:
| I used to say no all the time at frys and never once did
| they say anything.
| peteretep wrote:
| > Worst case you get banned
|
| Worst case is they call the local PD who are having a bad
| day and want to point a gun at a black man
| edgyquant wrote:
| I understand I can say no but this is the only Walmart in
| my routine that isn't a super center (it's a
| "neighborhood market") so I don't yet want to get banned
| from there. I am planning to start shopping at somewhere
| besides Walmart in the near future though.
| adrr wrote:
| If you think about what they are doing, they are
| searching your personal belonging. That bag is yours. Do
| you want to give money to a store that thinks it
| reasonable to randomly search customers?
| leesalminen wrote:
| I just hand them the receipt and keep walking. Nobody's
| ever said a word about it.
| syedkarim wrote:
| Are the prices at Walmart really that much lower than Target?
| On the limited amount of stuff I buy, it's not been the case.
| kube-system wrote:
| For an equivalent item, Target is usually not much more
| expensive, if any. But, Walmart carries cheaper
| alternatives and a wider selection than Target.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I haven't noticed a difference in most things. Some things
| are cheaper at Walmart, but they also often have companies
| make worse versions of products for them just so they can
| sell them cheaper.
| handrous wrote:
| Clothes are notorious for this.
|
| "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.
| mc32 wrote:
| A different phenomenon but somewhat related is when good
| brands have an unusual sale item (not a close out). It
| seems to be where the MFG had a bad run and they're
| noticing a higher rate of returns so they put them on
| sale. It's not worth it, get the full price version and
| avoid the defects (like seal quality, adhesive quality,
| material quality, etc.)
| gftttgggfffddd wrote:
| Uniquely talentless when it comes to existing in space
|
| Brilliant turn of phrase!
| ineedasername wrote:
| Regarding nearly all of these points, if you're on tight
| fixed-income budget, these don't matter, you don't have much
| choice. Similarly, you don't have much choice when Walmart is
| the only option around without a fair bit more travel, unless
| you pay very large markups at local convenience stores.
|
| #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.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Varies by store.
|
| 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.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| The staff are miserable because the pay is shit, and they're
| likely collecting or eligible for welfare. The customers
| treat them like shit. The shit that happens in and around
| Walmart's is soul destroying.
|
| If Walmart started treating their staff like Costco we'd see
| a lot happier staff, and pay less taxes on entitlements.
| handrous wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't intend that as a slight against the
| employees. It's just another thing that makes shopping
| there unpleasant. I don't expect that employees at a store
| like that put on a bunch of fake-happiness for my sake, but
| Wal-Mart's give off _strong_ "I hate this shit" vibes that
| I don't get other places. I don't blame them (the
| employees) for it, though.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| I agree, but would Walmart paying their staff like Costco
| to help them have some happiness in their life be enough
| to get customers like us in their stores?
|
| There's still the whole, all very poor people shop there
| dynamic that isn't going away unless someone can undercut
| Walmart significantly.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _strong "I hate this shit" vibes that I don't get other
| places_
|
| 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.
| partiallypro wrote:
| The Walmarts around me pay ~$15/hr which isn't much less
| than Costco.
| yumraj wrote:
| One thing I've noted in general is Costco employees are
| much younger on average than Walmart employees.
|
| I _almost_ never find an old employee at Costco, while at
| Walmart most of them are old or middle aged.
| jxramos wrote:
| This is my observation too, I often wondered if Walmart
| wasn't around what would be these folks alternatives?
| partiallypro wrote:
| Walmart often has stores in poorer areas than Costco,
| which is likely why you see the age discrepancy.
| yumraj wrote:
| Not really, my experience is based on both in the Bay
| Area, and includes WalMart neighborhood stores.
|
| I think it has to do with lot of older people shopping at
| Walmart so they feel comfortable around others. Don't
| know.
| sithlord wrote:
| your experience is literally in the most HCOL city in the
| United States.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Costco also has a pretty robust internal promotion system
| from what I've heard, so older employees might also be
| occupying management spots.
|
| 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.
| kortilla wrote:
| > If Walmart started treating their staff like Costco
|
| 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.
| cwilkes wrote:
| "If Walmart paid their staff ... little reason for them
| to exist"
|
| 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.
| kortilla wrote:
| "There exists people who got rich" does not make a model
| suddenly sustainable.
|
| 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.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >They could likely address this by having a second more upscale
| brand.
|
| That's kinda what Sam's Club is, though Sam's is competing
| against Costco
| wjamesg wrote:
| I wouldn't say Sam's Club is upscale...at all
| madengr wrote:
| Costco is like Sam's Club, but without the tattoos.
| mc32 wrote:
| Let me restate that: upscale and hip targeted at middle and
| upper middle/aspirational in urban and proximate suburban
| enviros.
| mike_d wrote:
| Upscale urban areas won't let Walmart even try to build
| something. Target worked really hard pitching their upscale
| "City Target" sub-brand to get San Francisco to let them
| in.
| bombcar wrote:
| Walmart is experimenting with something they call
| "Walmart Neighborhood Market" but I think they'd have
| done better to leave the Walmart name off it.
|
| 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.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yep , I agree. They don't need that boat anchor of a
| brand for something like that. New name, new colors, new
| atmosphere and of course, charge a bit more for the
| frills.
| bombcar wrote:
| They could have called it Waldi and started an amusing
| trademark war.
| crowman wrote:
| I had one right by my college apartment and was really
| happy with it. Very clean and always had what I needed,
| but not 'everything.' If they rebranded & incorporated
| them into suburban neighborhoods with a focus on
| walkability it could be a smart move to capture the
| wealthier 'conscious' shopper.
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| I like how you say ""Walmart is experimenting with
| something they call "Walmart Neighborhood Market" and
| they have had these for over a decade. I come from the
| area around the home office and they make the stores run
| quite a bit better there. The further away the store is
| the more likely there is less innovation or management
| issues. When I moved to the east cost I could clearly see
| certain loss prevention measures that made me not buy
| products.
| randompwd wrote:
| Doesn't sound like it:
|
| > Like other warehouse clubs, Sam's Club sells most of its
| merchandise in bulk and directly off pallets.
|
| Nothing upscale about that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam's_Club
| zippergz wrote:
| Sam's is more upscale than Wal-Mart, but in my experience it
| is very much the "Wal-Mart of warehouse stores" in that it
| feels less nice than Costco in the same area. I'm sure it
| varies, that's just based on the ones I've been to.
| handrous wrote:
| Yeah, maybe it varies, but the local Sam's has gone way
| downhill over the last couple decades (I don't think
| income-demographics have changed much in the area over the
| same time-span, which makes that really odd) along with the
| three nearest Wal-Marts. Sam's is now firmly in the same
| relation to CostCo as Wal-Mart is to Target: basically the
| same thing, except everything about it is anywhere from a
| little to a lot worse (except, sometimes, the prices)
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| It is literally the Walmart of warehouse stores.
|
| 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.
| loonster wrote:
| The parking lot at the costco near me is insane. Everytime
| I went there, I felt like I was going to get hit. Sure
| enough, an oldy was killed in the parking log shortly after
| I stopped going.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| You only believe these things are a problem because you don't
| understand positioning (in marketing terms). They are
| successful because of these qualities, not in spite of them.
| grillvogel wrote:
| maybe i'm weird but i actually prefer the vibe at walmart to
| the pseudo upscale feel of stores like target. at walmart you
| know what youre getting, theres no pretense that you are there
| for any other reason than cheap crap. people of all economic
| backgrounds are all there just to get the best deals.
| mc32 wrote:
| Thing is the vibe part I see but quality wise, they're on par
| with others. It's not Dollar store crap.
| kbelder wrote:
| I agree. Target is much more annoying; just as bottom-of-the-
| barrel, but they depend on pretending they're not.
| zippergz wrote:
| I don't know what's "pseudo" about cleaner floors and
| surfaces and better-organized merchandise. It's not just
| about decor. The Wal-Marts I have been to are a filthy mess,
| and it's clear no one cares.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| The one thing I like about Target is that it's quiet, they
| don't play music there and there's rarely talking over
| loudspeakers etc.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > Working class shoppers.
|
| 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.
| kube-system wrote:
| "Working class", despite what those words can mean
| separately, doesn't mean "class of people with a job".
|
| It is a polite rephrasing of the now antiquated phrase:
| "lower class".
|
| In fact, the "working class" aren't necessarily even
| employed.
| taurath wrote:
| /someone/ owns the boats in the marina. Usually someone very
| old for whom the economy worked out well for them. Bought a
| house worth a million dollars now on a near minimum wage job.
| LB232323 wrote:
| I certainly don't support the labor practices of Walmart, but I
| think you are the one with the serious image problem. You think
| you really exist in a different "stratum" when you still have
| to buy your own groceries?
|
| You aren't elitist, you aren't even close to "elite." You're
| just an asshole.
|
| Here's a fun fact, Whole Foods exploited slave labor to supply
| their tilapia. Here's another fun fact, if you need to work
| then you are working class.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > I think Wal*Mart has an image problem.
|
| 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.
| taurath wrote:
| Those ghost towns today are still ghost towns. If the
| suburban massive parking lot megastore is the best the
| economy has to offer I'm not sure whether the economy should
| exist that way.
|
| 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.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| It sucks that while there are enumerable benefits to free
| market capitalism, there's also serious drawbacks. You tend
| to see the formation of mega corporations that can use
| economy of scale to secure and hold huge economic advantage.
|
| 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.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| This is interesting. Normally people say "innumerable" in a
| sentence like this, meaning "too many to count", but in
| this case there's a malapropism which literally reverses
| the meaning whilst keeping the sense of the original almost
| intact.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Hah, that is interesting. I think I make that mistake
| because I'm a software developer an enums are a thing so
| my brain mixes up innumerable with enumerable.
| [deleted]
| rsuelzer wrote:
| This, in my opinion, is the largest role of government in a
| capitalist society. Capitalism is not sustainable without
| guard rails. By design, a company will always pass costs
| onto society if it can.
|
| 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.
| tartoran wrote:
| Amazon followed their path and they also started to have
| issue: with their image.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| It's not an image problem, shopping there is a terrible
| experience. The stores are always a mess and the employees are
| unhelpful. There always seems to be long lines at the front
| end. They do have a good selection of products, but I avoid
| shopping there whenever I can because it's so unpleasant.
| godot wrote:
| > Working class shoppers. Sure, it's elitist, but people like
| shopping alongside people in their own stratum.
|
| 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.
| frankydp wrote:
| To be clear the actual wealthy people always shop at Walmart,
| because, ya know, they are wealthy because they don't waste
| money on more expensive groceries because the floors are
| nicer, and they probably don't mind being around other hard
| working people.
|
| Only half tongue in cheek, and completely agreeing with you.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The difference I see with more upper class stores
| especially ones like Whole Foods is they tend to be in
| dense layouts where it is literally more time efficient to
| get your shopping done, and the stores are frequently
| placed on higher value property which is closer to the
| wealthy patrons. They tend to have a good selection of
| healthful foods maybe with pricy grass fed animal products
| with a higher ratio of omega3s, nitrate free cured meats,
| food for special diets like gluten-free, and all variety of
| things which are in a certain sense practical. Also
| generally the food of equal nutritional value tends to
| taste better, which makes it easier to stomach your
| conscientious diet.
|
| 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.
| pm90 wrote:
| What I've noticed with "upscale" stores like Whole Foods
| is that their "experience" is just totally different from
| WalMart (others have pointed this out in other threads).
|
| 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.
| crowman wrote:
| Almost correct- they get the curbside dropoff and never
| leave their car. At least, this is what the high (~5MM) net
| worth family I know does.
| nemothekid wrote:
| The "wealthy people only shop frugally" is about as
| truthful as "millenials are poor because they only eat
| avocado toast."
| g00gler wrote:
| > 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).
|
| 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.
| late2part wrote:
| Yes! I remember my first time at Whole Foods I asked where
| to find the Coca Cola and they were very rude about not
| carrying it.
| mc32 wrote:
| Forget a Coke (never mind they have other non-alc fizzy
| drinks) The don't carry Aspirin (or Advil or Tylenol, but
| whatever, but Aspirin, WTF?!
| jldugger wrote:
| > The don't carry Aspirin
|
| Maybe if some branded it as 'willow leaf pain relief'
| they'd carry it. It's natural and it rhymes!
| Rapzid wrote:
| HEB Central Market has excellent cheeses.
| pm90 wrote:
| Central Market is probably what I miss the most about
| Texas (apart from the excellent BBQ).
| quartesixte wrote:
| Thats cuz apparently Trader Joe's IS an Aldi's!
|
| Well, not originally, but they're owned by Aldi Nord for a
| while now.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trader_Joe's
| potta_coffee wrote:
| I pay more to avoid WalMart. I'm not even an elitist, I've
| just noticed in my area, the greeters are rude. After maybe 3
| bad experiences in a row, I've decided to never go to WalMart
| ever again and it's been over a year since I've shopped
| there.
| frankydp wrote:
| So to be clear you are not an elitist, but you don't shop
| at the lower cost store, because the greeter was having a
| bad day and was not nice enough to you and should have
| known what class you are and should have shown more
| reverence?.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Repetitively running into grumpy people in a particular
| place, and choosing to avoid that, is hardly elitism.
| You're choosing to interpret my statements in the least
| charitable way possible.
| alephnan wrote:
| > you don't shop at the lower cost store, because the
| greeter was having a bad day and was not nice enough to
| you
|
| 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
| frankydp wrote:
| I would also hope that customer service is awesome all
| the time, but saying the greeter was not nice enough is a
| pretty specific dog whistle.
|
| 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.
| alephnan wrote:
| > I would also hope that customer service is awesome all
| the time, but saying the greeter was not nice enough is a
| pretty specific dog whistle.
|
| 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.
| frankydp wrote:
| Please dial down the racism.
|
| I love you. Fight the hate!
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Working class shoppers
|
| 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.
| mc32 wrote:
| Wal*Mart, contrary to popular belief is paying $15 in many
| locations (as good as other chains).
| strikhedonia wrote:
| They're paying a mean of $15 an hour. That's quite
| different from a minimum of $15 an hour.
|
| Walmart jobs in my fairly HCOL area still start at $12 an
| hour.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I just saw a banner outside mine in a very low cost of
| living area advertising starting at $14 an hour.
| Noos wrote:
| they dont hire full time though, and hours can vary
| dramatically per week. if you get 12 hours one week and 32
| the next, that $15 an hour doesn't help that much. The big
| problem is we dont do full time work in most retail
| positions any more apart from the manager and maybe
| keyholders.
| protomyth wrote:
| The funny part is Walmart is paying better wages here than
| any competitor in retail space.
| bigwavedave wrote:
| > The issues I see are: [snip] Working class shoppers. Sure,
| it's elitist, but people like shopping alongside people in
| their own stratum.
|
| 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.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Sounds like it's a bug for him, because he doesn't want the
| filthy commoners making a mess of the place.
| dannyw wrote:
| Yeah cool, so by focusing on the 100 customers that brings
| $1 each, they've lost 1 customer that brings $2.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Their interior could use a better design. However, the vast
| majority of people are working class. Their problems aren't
| shoppers' opinions of other shoppers. An upscale version might
| attract other customers of a higher socioeconomic status, but
| there's lots of competition in that market as well, and it's
| not a core competency of Walmart, making it a longshot bet.
|
| 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.
| Rapzid wrote:
| It's not the best choice, it's Spacer's Choice!
| nitwit005 wrote:
| If your target market is people who want the lowest price,
| image issues tend not to matter that much (other than
| perception of being the lowest price option). You were probably
| never their first choice.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| It's not that I disagree but it's so depressingly cynical to
| suggest Walmart make its business less efficient for the sake
| of allowing for social stratification.
| wavefunction wrote:
| At least for me, Walmart is just a vehicle for the Waltons to
| extract wealth from the country. I suppose if Walmart divested
| themselves from the Waltons and adopted some sort of pro-
| employee policies I might shop there more frequently.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mikelward wrote:
| I went to a Walmart Supercenter this week to try to buy clothes
| and groceries. No carts or hand baskets available. One employee
| reprimanding another employee right in front of customers. No
| bags for produce. Underwear was in a locked cabinet. I pressed
| the button but nobody came to help. Grumpy attendant at the
| self checkout.
|
| It's no wonder that people who can afford to shop elsewhere do.
| [deleted]
| barsonme wrote:
| Tangentially related: one reason I try very hard not to shop at
| Walmart is because they try hard to make you feel like a
| criminal.
|
| 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.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| Basically you want a Walmart for white people? It's elitist
| thinking like this further grows the space between the "working
| class" and rich.
| mc32 wrote:
| Ha! You obviously don't shop at Wal*Mart. It's the working
| class for whomever is in the vicinity. In many places this is
| poor white people, in other places it's a mix.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I haven't shopped at Walmart since I moved to Portland
| because there's like 2 and they're on the otherside of
| town. I frequently shopped at Walmart prior to that. And
| you're wrong. I've never gone into any Walmart and only
| seen poor white people. It's mostly poor everyone.
| Walmart's are almost never put in rich areas because rich
| people don't want poor people shopping in their areas.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| You jumped from wealth to race. Who is the racist here?
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| Most rich people are white. Most elitist people are white.
| The people that want to shop at stores that have like
| people are white. I wasn't being racist, but elitist and
| racism go hand in hand.
| late2part wrote:
| Most people in the USA are white:
|
| https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| WalMart definitely has an image issue for me. In my town (very
| low crime), they're the only store with clear theft prevention
| in place.
|
| 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.
| mike_d wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| wldcordeiro wrote:
| Jet was an acquisition though. I get they tried to keep some
| of its "upscale" shine but they eventually shuttered it for
| their own online offering.
| mike_d wrote:
| It was an aquihire. "Jet" itself was an empty shell that
| the Walmart marketing folks could build a higher end brand
| inside.
|
| 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).
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| This comment is just so wildly delusional. Aristotle was right
| when he said that most envy and elitism is directed at other
| members of one's own class.
| paulpauper wrote:
| According to memo, Walmrt has competitors. who knew
|
| Look how well the stock is doing and has done over the past 4 or
| so years. to say they they are facing challenges or are
| struggling is overly-dramatic.
|
| Online shopping will never replace Walmart completely. Rather
| both will grow together.They both serve a role. A lot of ppl do
| not want to use amazon or don't have good internet access or
| cannot receive mail easily.
| chidog12 wrote:
| Anybody have link to the memo?
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Still annoyed that Target and Walmart refuse to accept Apple Pay
| so that they can continue to collect identifying data on all the
| customers that pass through their doors.
| mikelward wrote:
| Target does accept Apple Pay and Google Pay.
|
| https://help.target.com/help/subcategoryarticle?childcat=Acc...
| morpheos137 wrote:
| most people, outside of the covid event and the HN bubble prefer
| buying things in person. My issue with walmart has been poor
| quality items or common items out of stock. I remember a few
| years ago going to a walmart supercenter and they were out of
| stock of nutcrackers. This was not during the holiday season but
| come on people eat walnuts or almonds year round.
|
| Additionally walmart could do better with fewer more professional
| employees and with an app that would help shoppers find
| merchandise in store without needing to ask an employee.
| hogFeast wrote:
| This kind of thinking is why grocery chains have struggled
| despite having the deck stacked totally in their favour.
|
| Online retail, much like offline retail, is about physical
| infrastructure. You still need warehouses with all the product,
| you still need fulfilment, all online changes is the balance of
| those factors. The core assets don't change.
|
| I can see how they are losing on branding but losing to Instacart
| tells you that management lost touch with customers and sat on
| their laurels.
|
| That being said, I have no doubt that they will vanquish
| Instacart. And they will likely pressure aspects of Amazon's
| business too. It isn't actually possible to compete with WMT
| because they such a dense network already (outside the US, AMZN
| is going to struggle even more, they weren't aggressive enough in
| building fulfilment centres and they tried to build fewer, larger
| centres, Amazon will begin exiting some of these markets in the
| next five years and sell out to local operators with exiting
| fulfilment networks, an alternative would be they cede control
| over fulfilment to local operators and just operate the front-end
| website...either way, their position outside the US is likely
| unsustainable).
| 542354234235 wrote:
| > Online retail, much like offline retail, is about physical
| infrastructure. You still need warehouses with all the product,
| you still need fulfilment, all online changes is the balance of
| those factors. The core assets don't change.
|
| Which is why it is so weird when offline entities adding online
| lose out over and over to online only. They already have most
| of the infrastructure and their infrastructure is being paid
| for by two separate revenue streams (existing in store
| customers and new online customers). It just shows how often
| and how prevalent it is for these companies to rest on their
| laurels and siphon off every available penny of revenue for
| shareholder and executive profit, rather actually investing
| real time, effort, and talent into the online space. Which is
| why online companies can start from such a disadvantaged
| position and still surpass.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I worked at a Barne's & Noble book store in college right as
| Amazon took off. I think BN's model for doing online was
| pretty common, which was that they set it up as a separate
| business that they made compete with their retail outlets. If
| you went into a store that didn't have the book you were
| looking for, the last thing the store wanted you to do was to
| go home and order it online from the BN website. They pushed
| you to get it shipped to the store, the. Wait for a phone
| call to tell you it arrived so you could come back and buy
| it. Then the store got the revenue towards it's sales goals.
|
| One of many problems was that most people never actually came
| back to get the book when it arrived, and salespeople either
| didn't mention or actively discouraged buying on the web
| site, so the sale was lost completely. On the other side,
| their online wasn't integrated into their brick & mortar
| locations until way too late to claw back from Amazon. I'm
| not sure when they finally added the ability to see if a
| local store had a copy of the book you wanted, but it took
| too long because of the internal competition, and you still
| pretty much needed to call the store and make sure they had a
| copy because you could easily waste a trip if the inventory
| wasn't up to date or no one could find the book.
|
| Doing a bad job of adding online to their business ended up
| making the entire experience worse.
|
| Many retail chains seem to have done the same thing in the
| early days if trying to have an online presence. Heck, you
| still can't reserve or pre-buy a game at a physical using
| their web site, which says it's in stock. And you'll often
| still waste a trip if you trust the website and don't call
| ahead.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _they set it up as a separate business that they made
| compete with their retail outlets._
|
| Sadly, this is very common in retail, and one of the things
| that is destroying brick-and-mortar.
|
| My wife works in this space and tells me that a lot of
| retailers, from department stores to fancy boutiques, do
| this.
|
| The worst part is that since the online store is generally
| located in the warehouse, it gets first dibs on stock,
| while the stores have to do without. Some of the retail
| stores she works with will lose out on $20k/day because
| they can't get stock, but online always has it. The
| managers are training the customers to check online first,
| cannibalizing their own employees and stores. Then they
| send the daily reports to the stores with notes like, "I
| see that online did 44% better than your store in your zone
| today." Well, no shit. Online has stock and the boutiques
| don't.
|
| Sometimes the boutiques do a little fighting back, and sort
| of "pool" their stock. Meaning that if a store doesn't have
| something a customer wants, the employees of that store
| will call another store they reciprocate with and try to
| have the item shipped to the customer from that store for
| free. The just-above-minimum-wage shopgirl ends up eating
| the shipping just so she can make her unrealistic sales
| goal and stay employed for another month.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Ikea is the example I often cite.
|
| I am in the UK. Many of their locations are adjacent to
| motorways, they literally have a warehouse in the store, and
| all they need to add is a fulfilment network (which, btw,
| they already have just not large enough to meet demand).
| Admittedly, the stuff they carry is pretty
| heavy/expensive...but they are 99% of the way there.
|
| Instead, you go on their website, a lot of the stuff on there
| doesn't work properly, and delivery times are a month plus.
| It is deliberate.
|
| Wayfair is dropshipping stuff from China, and managing to
| compete with them...how? It makes no sense. Ikea have a
| position that no competitor could actually replicate without
| losing billions of pounds, and they are getting beaten by a
| company which doesn't manufacture goods, owns one or two
| warehouses, and doesn't fulfil orders...how? Literally,
| Wayfair just have a bunch of websites (now consolidated) with
| good SEO...and Ikea are just handing them market share.
|
| And yes, "executive profit" is the key point. Executive comp
| is set by comp committees who have no clue, and benchmark off
| whatever they the company is already doing/last year's
| numbers. Why do execs care if the company blows up in five
| years through malinvestment? They will have cashed out their
| options by then and will be lighting their cigars with fifty
| pound notes. Imo, executive comp structure is 95% to do with
| why this has happened (in my experience, exec comp in
| physical retail is structured very poorly across the board,
| it incentivizes poor ROIC growth).
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| I suspect you could be right about executive profits, but
| do you have any specific indication that this is what ails
| IKEA?
| hogFeast wrote:
| Nope, the comment about Ikea is unrelated. Ikea is
| privately-owned, and my guess is that they just don't
| want to do online...some privately-owned companies are
| like that.
|
| The point about exec comp is what I have seen at other
| publicly-listed physical retailers (i.e. dead format,
| competitors eating their lunch but they keep opening
| stores because the comp committee wants EPS growth).
| dwighttk wrote:
| I wish walmart would buy barnes and noble, let me add a book to
| clear the free shipping bar
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| Instacart is a threat to WalMart? That's a surprise. I had no
| idea Instacart was that big. I think of them as a gig-economy
| delivery service that delivers only 80% of what you order.
|
| The whole business of sending people to do shopping in retail
| stores seems a temporary business until the grocery industry gets
| fulfillment figured out. It's like a throwback to the early days
| of Internet commerce, when the web site didn't talk to the
| inventory system, so many orders could not be fulfilled properly.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Probably the best thing about COVID is now all stores here do
| curbside pickup. I don't understand why it took COVID to make
| companies realize that "hey, a large part of your clientele
| don't want to wander your aisles."
| dlbucci wrote:
| Funnily enough, that's actually how grocery stores used to
| operate: people would bring a list of items they wanted to
| the store, and the employees would go get them. Piggly Wiggly
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggly_Wiggly) popularized the
| concept of self-serve grocery stores that we know today. I
| recall that people preferred this because they could pick
| their preferred cuts of meat, or veggies, or what have you.
| krapp wrote:
| >I don't understand why it took COVID to make companies
| realize that "hey, a large part of your clientele don't want
| to wander your aisles."
|
| Because making shoppers wander the aisles leads them to buy
| more things than they intended to. There's a reason best-
| selling items are always placed at eye level.
| subpixel wrote:
| Not only that, there is real money made in in-store product
| placement (end caps) etc.
|
| Less foot traffic, less money.
| bytelines wrote:
| What prevents that from happening in a web-based
| experience?
| unpolloloco wrote:
| Mostly, limited visual field. Screens aren't able to lure
| you in through peripheral vision
| kevincox wrote:
| They try. For example Instacart shows you "recommended"
| items at multiple places in the shopping flow. However I
| think there is some sort of limit here because it feels
| more explicit. If I search for something it is obvious
| when you are putting results that don't match in my way.
| In the store it is easy not to realize that the things
| that you want are intentionally spread out.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Because making shoppers wander the aisles leads them to
| buy more things than they intended to. There's a reason
| best-selling items are always placed at eye level.
|
| And the dairy or automotive sections are nowhere near the
| entrance. They want you to impulse buy some cookies or a $5
| DVD on your way to get milk or an oil change.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Ehhh I like to peruse the apps for new stuff I've never
| tried before. It's easier to impulse shop in an app than it
| is to bounce back and forth between aisles.
|
| For example you might see a novel ingredient in the ethnic
| food section of the app, go look up a recipe that includes
| it, add all the rest of the ingredients all without putting
| on pants.
| supertrope wrote:
| Grocery stores operate with razor thin margins of 2%. Pickup
| is more labor intensive and hastily scaled up COVID-19 pickup
| runs at a -5% profit. It's better than no sales but is
| inherently a luxury service in a market with customers who
| are not willing to pay extra. Even Whole Foods had to find an
| exit as mainstream and discount grocers started grabbing
| organic market share.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Yeah, I worked at Meijer when they introduced their
| curbside pickup. It was a challenge getting that
| profitable. They had to have extra coolers for meats and
| other products that needed to be kept cool until the
| customer arrived.
|
| They ended up just raising prices on all products purchased
| through Shipt (instacart) or through curbside. Most people
| don't notice that a pack of batteries is 5.49 in store
| versus 5.99 in the app.
|
| Some big ticket items, like Xboxes or other digital items,
| where customers generally know the price, were not
| increased. But in general it worked out well and became
| profitable.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Used to do retail tech work.
|
| Instacart collapses brand identities as consumers don't care
| where the food comes from. This is very top of mind of whatever
| reason for retail/grocery execs.
| jh0486 wrote:
| This has been the story for the last 8 years at minimum. There's
| nothing new here. They have still found a way to survive and grow
| during this time.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| I want _someone_ , *anyone*, to knock Amazon down. So here's some
| free advice to Walmart.
|
| Consider Walmart's weaknesses and how other companies address
| them.
|
| - manually stocked shelves
|
| Consider Costco's model of placing pallets of product on the
| floor. Most Walmart's have the vertical space to go up. Obviously
| redesigning their store experience is expensive and difficult
| with a stagnating industry and a lot of staff that don't like
| tech or change. But these are not hard problems. For large items
| like boxes of soda and cereal, this is simple, just add some
| flimsy cardboard shelves holding the rows together. For beauty
| products and small items like that keep the system and layout the
| same to keep things simple, but start working with manufacturers
| on palletized displays that satisfy their in store image
| requirements.
|
| - poor buy online pickup at store experience, both online and in
| store.
|
| Make it easier to shop a particular local Walmart for pickup and
| only the stock in that store. The same goes for shopping online
| for shipping and only those products sold by Walmart. Having
| three different experiences is good for consumers, but make it
| easier for the customer to specify which one they want.
|
| - the notorious Walmart experience, and the notorious people of
| Walmart
|
| This is a tough one that I don't have a good answer for besides
| look to target and Trader Joe's for inspiration while hiring
| sociologists and the advertising company behind fidget spinners.
|
| - online purchase, in store pickup experience
|
| In years past it made sense to force customers to walk through
| the entire store to do some annoying task. These days? I pay
| more, sometimes a lot, to not have to enter a store, or speak to
| underpaid and overworked staff there. Punch some new doors on the
| side of the the building, put in a few reefer fridges, some more
| shelves, and have the in house developers crank out a contactless
| pickup web app. Include
|
| - innovate
|
| For things I buy all the time, I'm not time sensitive. Hook
| customers on something addictively convenient like weekly grocery
| delivery of their staples with Walmart's plus subscription. Stuff
| like milk, eggs, bread, cheese, deli meat, etc. also, if I know
| I'm having a big party in two weeks and don't want to deal with
| the groceries I'd love a reliable way to 60 fresh avocados, 10
| cases of beer, 20 bags of chips, and 30 pounds of meat without
| going to multiple stores. Right now the only way I can do this is
| by ringing the manager of the store and placing a special order.
| It shouldn't even be that hard to logistically handle the ebbs
| and flow of demand. Problem is can someone build such a system
| profitably? If Walmart can't, I doubt anyone could.
| bombcar wrote:
| Costco stocks 4,000 products. Walmart stocks 100,000.
|
| A Walmart with things palleted like Costco would be roughly
| twenty times the size.
|
| It would be amazing but terrifying.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >In years past it made sense to force customers to walk through
| the entire store to do some annoying task. These days? I pay
| more, sometimes a lot, to not have to enter a store, or speak
| to underpaid and overworked staff there. Punch some new doors
| on the side of the the building, put in a few reefer fridges,
| some more shelves, and have the in house developers crank out a
| contactless pickup web app. Include
|
| A lot of walmarts now actually have this automated pickup
| machine [1]. It's honestly kinda cool. The grocery pickup
| they'll bring out to your car for free too, unfortunately
| sometimes I've had to wait 10 minutes though, so it's not as
| breezy as I'd prefer.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71pgd-LzzXc
| subpixel wrote:
| Combine all this with a plan for Walmart to be fully employee-
| owned. Then millennials will be lining up not to shop there but
| to work there.
|
| While this is perhaps impractical in the case of WalMart, I
| think you don't compete with Amazon at what they are best at.
| You have to change the game.
| frankydp wrote:
| Walmart has Sams Club.
|
| Have you used the Walmart grocery pickup? It is seriously
| great, with its own app flow both on mobile and browser. They
| have been rolling this for years, even in rural markets. It is
| most of what you have described, complete with store redesigns
| on the side of the building with covered parking for pick up.
| Maybe it is regional, but is crushing the southeast.
|
| Getting rid of poor people in a Walmart is a crazy statement,
| that you should probably edit out.
|
| I agree on the easier website experience for Walmart only as
| vendor for delivery, but they do have a walmart instock section
| on the website, which allows you to browse up to the minute
| stocks and order them for pickup or delivery same day or next.
|
| Your party example is exactly what Walmart Grocery Pickup is.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| For the people of Walmart, the problem is Walmart makes a ton
| of its money by vacuuming up all the low/no income customers
| that would have been served in smaller numbers by convenience
| type stores. If they go upscale like Target or Trader Joes,
| they lose that customer base and move into competition directly
| with those types of stores. Same with the layout. Sure, you or
| I will pay more for a store laid out for actual convenience and
| fully staffed decently paid cashiers that will get me in and
| out quickly, but most of their customer base wont.
|
| It reminds me of Mcd's problem. They can't go upscale because
| people that will pay for it already like places like Chipotle
| or Chick fil a more and Mcd's is so deeply branded as the
| classic cheap fast food. And their current customer base is
| heavily weighted at lower income busy people looking for the
| ubiquity, price, and mentally easy process.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I didn't realize Chick Fil A was more upscale. Though the one
| s in my area are food court versions-- are the full physical
| locations markedly nicer inside than McDonald's? I think
| their employees do get paid more and/or better benefits
| though.
| trashcan wrote:
| I wouldn't say the physical location is materially nicer,
| but the food experience is. I don't think I've ever been
| served stale food at Chick Fil A, and at McDonald's there's
| a very good chance on almost every visit. The employees
| also seem much happier and more helpful in my anecdotal
| experience.
| Jakobeha wrote:
| I've used both Instacart and Walmart delivery because I don't
| have a car and live ~3miles from the nearest supermarket.
|
| In my experience, Instacart has worked very well: the only issues
| (2-hour delivery window, tip for delivery) are upfront, but I
| rarely get messed up / late / bad orders. The website is also
| great.
|
| The only time I used Walmart, my delivery was rescheduled to the
| next day, something which never happened with 50+ Instacart
| deliveries. And the website sucks.
| nitrogen wrote:
| That probably comes down to location and
| competence+availability of staff. I've had basically equal
| results from the three different grocery stores I've ordered
| from in my current location, one of which is Walmart, one is a
| Kroger subsidiary, and one is a local higher-end chain. But
| when I was in SF, I had terrible results with Instacart, and
| resorted to shopping in person.
| Jakobeha wrote:
| Honestly I still wish I could shop in person, it's just too
| far :)
|
| Not trying to be rude but maybe you didn't tip enough? The
| default tip is 5% but I usually do ~20%.
| nitrogen wrote:
| I usually tipped delivery services 15-20%, more if it was
| raining, but shouldn't tips be hidden and only given in
| aggregate? Also I wish a fair wage was just baked into the
| price and tipping went away.
| paxys wrote:
| Walmart gets a lot of flak for being old school and allowing
| Amazon's rise, but they are one of the very few retailers who
| have actually been able to respond to competitive threats over
| the last decade or two. Walmart Labs has some great tech and
| hires top software talent in the industry. They aren't shy about
| making large acquisitions when needed (like Jet). They have built
| out their own delivery and logistics network and now offer 2 day,
| 1 day or same day shipping. They even have their own "Prime"
| subscription and grocery deliveries.
|
| The business could easily have gone the way of Sears.
| random314 wrote:
| The top talent they hire, quit within 2 years leaving behind
| the terrible engineers. Last I heard, the tried to build an A/B
| testing infrastructure that somehow managed to count clicks
| backwards. They tried to build an in house cloud platform too
| and failed miserably.
| russdpale wrote:
| Yeh they also totally fuck over farmers, employees, and even
| tried to pay Mexican employees in Walmart dollars while housing
| them in the back of the store.
|
| It should have gone the way of sears. Its an abusive business
| that is bad for everyone.
| grouphugs wrote:
| this is quite the joke. walmart maintains a standing para-
| military with a lot of weapons and equipment. when people find
| mass grave-sites all over south of the the border (and there's
| A LOT of them), there's some common characteristics. walmart
| hats, coca cola hats, chikita banana stickers, and goya labels.
| imperialism and fascism both suck, so does walmart and amazon
| dalbasal wrote:
| >> Walmart gets a lot of flak
|
| In a way, it reminds me of "MSFT is Dead" stuff from circa
| 2008. Google had taken email by storm, was moving on office and
| seemed to be making web into their own OS. Windows Vista & IE
| sucked. Google just seemed so much nimbler. Apple had risen
| from the dead, and was reinventing consumer electronics. MSFT
| was looking decrepit, the next IBM.
|
| MSFT never panicked. Software was a great business to be in,
| and the pressure was never financial. Meanwhile, they
| maintained their own ways and their own cultural advantages,
| long term perseverance, reverse compatibility, etc.
|
| They didn't win every race. Google won mobile OS, the "browser
| war. MSFT's attempts at a search business didn't succeed. They
| did win enough though, plenty. Google was better at web based
| software earlier, but MSFT held on to Office/Productivity.
| Office 365 wasn't as slick as early, but it was/is the product
| businesses will pay for. Most notably, they beat Google on
| cloud. Cloud was in Google's wheelhouse, and emphatically not
| in MSFT's. They started late. Google's "paradigm" mentality was
| great for the early part of the game. Getting where we are
| today though, that required carrying old paradigms into the new
| world. It required lots of mess, details, requirements that
| don't really make sense... That _is_ MSFT 's wheelhouse.
| Meeting companies where they are. Its a foreign concept to
| Google.
|
| Today, Google is the one that seems weaker. They're plenty
| rich, and plenty capable technologically. They aren't very good
| at building businesses though. It's still all about adwords.
|
| MSFT could have gone the way of IBM.
| nly wrote:
| To be fair a lot of this is because Google can't execute
| properly.
|
| Office 365 just destroys Google Docs, everything MSFT offer
| just integrated well, is priced well.
|
| Chrome OS + Android + Docs could have been the productivity
| Windows PC killer if they'd executed it with vision.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Sure, but this covers a lot of territory.
|
| Executing well on a new paradigm for a 30 year old suite,
| maintaining compatibility, etc. These are really hard, and
| MSFT's speciality. Office became office originally for
| maintaining meticulous compatibility with _its_
| predecessor, Lotus.
|
| It's incredibly tedious, frustrating work. Takes a ton of
| perseverance. Google docs came out of the gate to oohs and
| ahs. It was slick. Cool, innovative features like real-time
| collaboration worked well. MSFT's start was much clunkier,
| and expectations were already high. It took years before it
| wasn't an embarrassment. Even then, office 365 was never
| cool, not even now.
|
| These two companies are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
| Google likes paradigms, impressive launches. Then, they
| expect that the paradigm, being better, will just win.
| Everyone will adapt to their new way. They don't have the
| belly for years of kludgy, schleppy work while everyone
| makes fun of them.
|
| Google cloud was a great example of this. It was early. It
| solved the problems that needed solving, in theory...
| especially the sexy ones. Everyone just needed to abandon
| everything they had been doing and come over to the New
| Way.
|
| This is the exact opposite mentality to the one that
| maintains badly thought out feature of excel from 1996,
| itself design to clumsily support Lotus notes features from
| 1985. A million boring details, technical debt and nothing
| sexy. Where there's muck there's brass.
| mschuetz wrote:
| > Office 365 just destroys Google Docs
|
| I disagree. Office licensing and the whole Microsoft
| account managament is so incredibly annoying to the point
| where I prefer the google suite simply because it works.
| Office recently left me stranded with an outdated license
| and no way to enable it because the ones in charge were not
| in office that day, so I went with google, and I'm sticking
| to it now even though there would be the option to enable
| to license. I don't want to go through the same hoops and
| hurdles every 6 months again.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Walmart has some weird cultural issues that make store
| operations hard to adapt. It's a pretty miserable place to
| work. They hire anyone, turn them out quickly, and have weird
| work rules for things like gathering in a group.
|
| Target's pickup operation is superior in every dimension. They
| made the decision to put it front and center, and their
| employees seem happier. It takes <3 minutes to have a Target
| person drop stuff in your car, Walmart requires scheduling and
| is usually late.
|
| The other issue they have is that their logistical operation is
| best in class for retail, but not so good for shipping.
| redisman wrote:
| > It's a pretty miserable place to work.
|
| Huh sounds a bit like another company I happen to know
| medntech wrote:
| ScAmazon.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Walmart has some weird cultural issues that make store
| operations hard to adapt. It's a pretty miserable place to
| work. They hire anyone, turn them out quickly, and have weird
| work rules for things like gathering in a group.
|
| Is any company in retail any different? Except for the "hire
| anyone", most people would probably say that describes
| Amazon.
| [deleted]
| barry-cotter wrote:
| You're just describing how Target and Walmart have different
| business models, same as CostCo does. There's a continuum
| there. Walmart has lower profit margins, lower prices, stocks
| many more items, has many more options for size rather than
| all bulk and will hire far lower quality workers. CostCo is
| at the other end on all of those and Target is intermediate.
| People really, really care about price.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I'm fairly certain Costco has lower prices and profit
| margins than Target. So it's not "on the other end on all
| of those" with Target being intermediate.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| A few years ago, I would agree with you on profit margins
| at Costco.
|
| I do not see deals anymore. Sure they like to bundle
| (especially in threes), but the product is usually the
| stuff that isn't selling elsewhere, and the price isn't
| much if the consumer divides by 3.
|
| I used to buy there all the time because of the no
| question asked return policy. That has changed. They
| question a lot more than electronics returns too.
|
| Oh yea, most high end watches you see in the case are
| Grey Market bought, and have no manufacturer's warranty.
|
| What's keeping Costco happy is the membership fees. That
| is pure profit.
| xeromal wrote:
| Costco's high barrier is the membership cost where they
| derive a substantial amount of their profit.
| jxramos wrote:
| the spectrum seems accurate for the employee pay I think.
| opinion-is-bad wrote:
| Costco also sells in much larger sizes, so while the
| price may be lower on a per unit basis, you often pay
| more overall. It's a trade not everyone wants, e.g. lack
| of space to store bulk goods in a small apartment.
| Costco, Target, Amazon, et al compete on some sort of
| n-dimensional plane with price, size, shopping
| experience, brand, etc all play a part. It's not a line.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Walmart uses their market size to force suppliers to
| produce special packaging for Walmart that is a slightly
| different sized box for many food items, where that product
| is a bit lighter than the same sized box at another
| retailer. The catch is Walmart advertises their price,
| which looks lower in print, but if one purchases that
| product at Walmart and also at another grocer you will find
| the Walmart version is slightly more expensive by weight,
| holds less than the other same sized box but labeled with
| the correct weight. Only a careful consumer will notice
| that Walmart costs more, if calculated by weight.
| pnutjam wrote:
| The other problem is substitution. WalMart will sub something
| different as if it's the same. They also assume you picked up
| if you go anywhere near the store.
| dimmke wrote:
| This is really the problem with everything Walmart has done
| wrt eCommerce/online pickup IMO - It's like all the pieces
| are there, but they can't bring them all together.
|
| I've hit their website from Google looking for an item, and
| the lead time to ship is 2+ weeks and it's highlighted that
| it's sourced from a partner.
|
| Putting aside the obvious - it's just a worse deal. For most
| items, they're competing with 1-2 days, a product page packed
| with verified reviews to help decision making, a company with
| top notch customer support/return policies and the price is
| usually the same or cheaper, there's other issues at play
| too.
|
| It's subtle psychological cues. First, the way they highlight
| that it's from their partner almost makes it seem like
| they're doing dropshipping, they don't actually know if it's
| in stock and I can order and they will put a hold on my
| credit card. Maybe I'll get it in 2 weeks. Maybe a month.
| Maybe the order will eventually be cancelled or I will go
| through a nightmare dealing with their support or having to
| do a chargeback.
|
| I'm not going through all of that stuff in my head, it's just
| my mind in the background doing pattern matching with other
| bad experiences I've had shopping online.
|
| I understand it takes time and truckloads of money to get
| something even close to what Amazon has, but it also requires
| good leadership at the executive level.
|
| The one area that Walmart could absolutely crush Amazon in
| would be picking up your order online, same day. Walmart
| should be able to leverage all their experience with brick
| and mortar to do this.
|
| Instead, they're flagging behind Target. Their solution is
| pretty middle of the road, all the big retailers have
| something similar.
|
| Amazon bought Whole Foods, so they have a footprint, just
| like Walmart has an online store. Based on how these
| companies have executed which do you think happens first?
| Amazon nails in person pickup or Walmart nails online
| shopping.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I've given up on Walmart online ordering after a couple
| experiences where my order was fulfilled by a dropshipper
| who bought the wrong item and had it shipped to me as a
| gift through Amazon. Massive confusion all around, and it
| ended with cancelling and getting a refund from Walmart.
| olivermarks wrote:
| 'Amazon nails in person pickup or Walmart nails online
| shopping.'
|
| Amazon has nailed free shipping with prime. In person
| pickup costs money in time, fuel, available vehicle. Feels
| like checkmate in 2021 but this may change
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > Amazon has nailed free shipping with prime.
|
| Not everywhere. I didn't renew my prime subscription a
| few years ago, because they rarely met their delivery
| times and I was starting to get broken, counterfeit, and
| obviously returned/resold items.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Never paid Amazon a dime for Prime, like ever. I'm sure
| I'm missing something but in general shy away from any
| and all subscriptions.
|
| I consistently and daily choose no, fuck off and give me
| the free shipping I'll wait. If I don't have enough in my
| cart for free shipping I wait and add more to my cart
| later
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I'm with you on anything charged monthly, even though I
| feel Amazon Prime Videos outshines Netflix in terms of
| good older movies.
|
| That said, I know too many people who renew Prime like it
| was a church tithing. (Yes--I know about their yearly
| deal.)
|
| It's not movies these people like either. These people
| love the formulated crap Netflix vomits.
|
| Your post resonated with me because I try hard to avoid
| any monthly fees for any product. Plus--unless you order
| a lot, people are just giving Amazon free money.
|
| You just reminded me to cancel Apple storage.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I dislike Walmart rather intensely but I know if I order
| a new Kitchen Aid mixer from them I'm going to get a new
| Kitchen Aid mixer. Ask me how I know the same isn't true
| of Amazon. No matter how good your delivery logistics,
| it's not "nailing it" if I get the wrong thing fast.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Do you really though? They do the same third-party seller
| thing as Amazon.
| jstrom wrote:
| I usually filter by "Retailer: Walmart.com" for any
| common and/or name-brand item (and price/shipping is
| usually better than 3rd part sellers anyway). You still
| have to take your chances for more obscure items, but at
| least for me that's rare.
| eloff wrote:
| It's not third party sellers, it's comingling inventory
| from third party sellers. That breaks the reviews /
| reputation as a way to check, and it means if there's
| even one bad egg, even if I buy from Amazon itself, I can
| still get the wrong product.
| specialist wrote:
| It seems to me Amazon's comingling is bad for
| competition. Players on their platform, not between
| Amazon and others.
|
| Have any of the regulators taken note?
|
| I've been reading Congress' anti-trust research and
| reports. Haven't seen this called out yet.
| bjornjajayaja wrote:
| Selling fake products masquerading as a real ones. That's
| literally the worst case scenario for a customer.
|
| If I buy a product and it has issues--okay, it happens.
| Maybe I post a bad review or just don't buy it again.
|
| If I buy a product and it's something else, the seller
| should be ashamed of themselves.
|
| I have bought (and returned) countless fraudulent books
| from Amazon to the point where I had to weigh the books,
| count the pages, and compare with publishers.
|
| And then I closed my prime membership and I'll take the
| longer wait times for a real product.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's the thing with Walmart, they aren't shady enough
| to play the same game. Once you break out of the Amazon
| bubble of faith based "Amazon is amazing!", it's just
| retail.
|
| Once you get out of the Amazon funnel, why go to Walmart?
| There's a hundred retailers that sell genuine KitchenAid
| mixers. Pick the one with the best price, or color scheme
| you prefer.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I think combined shipping can be a huge attraction factor
| for an Amazon or Walmart.
|
| If you want to buy a $150 mixer, but also, say, a $10
| book and a $5 cable, you'll be able to put those all in
| one cart at those vendors and get free postage.
|
| If you go to some specialty mixer retailer, you'll have
| to buy the other items as a seperate transaction and pay
| for shipping on them.
|
| I know in my household, we definitely will ask around
| "I'm buying something from Amazon, so I'll already be
| spending $25, does anyone want anything else on that
| order?"
| ericbarrett wrote:
| I've commented on this before--you kind of don't. It will
| be a true KitchenAid brand, of course. But the actual
| machine may be compromised. Walmart places intense
| pressure on their suppliers and often sells Walmart-only
| SKUs made of inferior parts and materials.
|
| I bought rope there (in a physical store) a few months
| ago, for tying down furniture in a truck. Got home, cut
| the rope, it was a foam core with braiding around it to
| make it seem like true rope.
|
| This applies to their food items as well, by the way.
| jvolkman wrote:
| Maybe you just bought floating rope? There are a bunch of
| floating rope products that advertise foam cores.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Nope. I know what floating rope is and that was nowhere
| on the packaging. It was also the only rope for sale in
| the store, alongside (very cheap) carabiners etc. and not
| in a boating or pool section.
| jeanvaljean2463 wrote:
| A thousand nods of agreement. I tell everyone that will
| listen to stop buying from Amazon and feeding the beast.
| They know that they have a counterfeit problem and they
| refuse to face it. I suspect that someone has done the
| math and figured out that most people won't figure it out
| or complain so it's more profitable to just let the
| common binning continue.
| dimmke wrote:
| To be clear, I think it's way more important for Walmart
| to nail online shopping than vice versa, but clearly
| Amazon feels having a physical presence is important.
| Closi wrote:
| A click and collect / in person delivery has benefits too
| though:
|
| * It's cheaper for Walmart as it can ride on the back of
| an existing trunk from a logistics perspective.
|
| * Dependent on how confident you are on stock, Walmart
| could offer "instant" click and collect on any range in
| stock in store. This does depend on inventory policies
| and is more complicated than it initially seems though.
|
| * It gets someone in your store which has an umbrella
| effect as they are likely to purchase something else.
|
| Most are benefits for Walmart, but the lower delivery
| cost can be passed on to customers and instant pickup is
| great for customers when it happens. Furthermore, click
| and collect is great for people in flats or where leaving
| a parcel isn't practical.
| [deleted]
| AmVess wrote:
| 2 weeks is exactly how long it took to get an item, and
| they lost 2 other orders and had appalling customer
| service. I had to resort to a chargeback in order to get my
| money back. They couldn't find or bother to find the order
| in their system.
| elliekelly wrote:
| A few years ago Walmart came out with this bizarre simulation
| game(?) where you "work" in their store:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spark-city/id1435371389
| BeetleB wrote:
| > It takes <3 minutes to have a Target person drop stuff in
| your car
|
| In my experience, it's rarely as low as 3 minutes. It's often
| quicker for me to go in and get in line at the customer
| service.
| dmfb wrote:
| The rules against gathering. in a group are not just weird.
| It's a blatant anti-union mechanism.
| dylan604 wrote:
| As a customer visiting any store (not just Walmart), it is
| rather frustrating to need assistance from an employee but
| unable to find one until you find a gaggle of them all
| "hanging out". I have no idea what they are doing. They
| could be talking about unions, they could be talking about
| the weather, or they could all have just completed assiting
| the movement of a heavy item require 4 "teammates". Either
| way, it is not a good look for the customer.
| wishinghand wrote:
| I don't know why any of those three possibilities
| qualifies as a "bad look". They're working humans with
| needs, just like anyone else. It'd be like saying it's a
| bad look whenever a few programmers are at a computer.
| What could they be doing?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why would you even try to compare coders to customer
| service oriented jobs? No computer coding company has
| ever had a slogan similar to "We're here to help". Every
| big box retailer promotes their employees being there to
| assist their customers. That's why the all wear the same
| color blue shirts, orange aprons, etc so that they are
| easily identifiable to customers looking for assistance.
| That's their job, at least part of the job.
| taurath wrote:
| Having worked retail stores, you really underestimate how
| little time you have as any individual to get your shit
| done and also help customers. That gaggle may be them
| deciding how to make the store look right with only 4
| people when normally it'd take 8.
|
| If you want good customer service go somewhere they dont
| cut corners on staffing while paying the heroes that have
| to do 3 people's jobs minimum wage.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >That gaggle may be them deciding
|
| Then take that gaggle to the back in a meeting room so
| that it's not visible to the customers.
|
| >If you want good customer service go somewhere they dont
| cut corners
|
| Where does this exist? I'm free this weekend. I'll see
| about taking a visit to this magical fairy land you
| speak. /s Seriously though, what public facing retail
| store doesn't cut corners on staffing or any other
| aspect? I need to expand my list of stores not on the
| "disgusted with" list
| pbourke wrote:
| > Seriously though, what public facing retail store
| doesn't cut corners on staffing or any other aspect?
|
| Food co-ops and independent/small chain grocers. We are
| fortunate to have a good density of these in the Seattle
| area and PNW in general.
|
| http://northwestgrocers.com/?page_id=12
| taurath wrote:
| > Then take that gaggle to the back in a meeting room so
| that it's not visible to the customers.
|
| Maybe they don't care about offending you? Just a
| thought.
| [deleted]
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I'd just like them to observe Walton's imposed limit of no
| more than two customers in line. I'm getting really fed up
| with retailers that won't staff their registers. And no, self
| checkout is a slap in the face where you exit the store as a
| presumed criminal after providing free labor. It's like they
| want me to buy from Amazon.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Safeway has this problem.
|
| Safeway has managed to piss off every singe one of their
| employees.
|
| My local Safeway couldn't find help for years.
|
| Since the epidemic, that is changing. They are hiring
| people who don't care much about conditions, or pay, and I
| know I'm suspose to say that's great.
|
| Those people will get tired of being treated terribly in
| the future though.
|
| I bet Safeway is lobbying the state right now to allow
| booze sales through self-checkout. The only people I see in
| line waiting five deep is liquor sales.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The store I regularly go to has eighteen or twenty
| registers, and I've never seen more than three staffed.
| This issue has persisted for years.
|
| Biggest reason I don't go grocery shopping at Walmart.
| Doing a full cart through a tiny self-checkout area is a
| PITA.
| darkscape wrote:
| Free labor - not with the portable scanner type of self-
| checkout. You put stuff directly in your bag instead of the
| cart, so no extra effort is necessary. Although tbh, even
| the scale-type machines are quicker to use than waiting in
| line. They do perform randomized checks, but very rarely
| and only 3 items ie 1-2 minutes total delay.
|
| Plus with contactless payment my shopping is an essentially
| frictionless walk through the store building.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Self-checkout? Best invention of the 2000's
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Sorta. Took them a while to turn it off criminal mode.
| Wasn't long ago you had to bag an item before you could
| scan the next. But I have more than 1 hand. Sometimes
| multiple people.
|
| French ones still run in criminal mode.
| varsketiz wrote:
| What is criminal mode?
| pbourke wrote:
| I think they mean when the machine is set to a strict
| weight measurement tolerance (or similar) so that for
| nearly every item it complains about putting things into
| or taking them out of the bag. You often have to call the
| checkout area minder over to fix it. It makes the process
| take much longer than it should.
| Biganon wrote:
| The machines weigh stuff? I don't understand that. Here
| in Switzerland you just scan the barcode of every item
| and place it in a bag, done. What is there to weigh?
|
| Also recently I started using what I guess is the Swiss
| (Coop) equivalent of Scan and Go: I scan with my phone in
| the aisles, but stuff in my bag directly in the aisles as
| well, and when I leave the list of items I've taken is
| transmitted to a classic self checkout machine and I just
| have to pay. I wish I could avoid the machine entirely
| and pay from my phone, I assume it will exist one day.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The big bagging area will be one big scale. It's not that
| big of a deal when programmed correctly. You can place
| your own bags on it too (but there's usually a button you
| have to press so it tares it correctly).
|
| The scanning area will have it owns weight sensor for
| unweighed fruits and vegetables. This scale is usually
| calibrated/verified by a government body because it
| relates to pricing. In Europe, it's common to bag and
| weigh your produce in the produce section, but in N.
| America, it's integrated with the checkout process.
|
| I live near a Walmart "flagship" store and they are/were
| testing out a system where you scan items are you pick
| them and then can bag them in your cart, with a special
| aisle for exit. I suspect the cart also goes over a scale
| and they determine if it matches correctly.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That and when you can't pick up multiple packages of
| something, scan them and then bag them all at once. You
| have to complete each individual process before starting
| the next.
|
| Painful for small items or when you have a helper.
| taurath wrote:
| They're in criminal mode in the US depending on the store
| location. 2 Safeway's about a 10 minute drive from each
| other have opposite policies, also the more poor the area
| the less likely to have self checkout at all
| draw_down wrote:
| I've walked out of more than one Safeway because the self
| checkout refused to let me proceed and nobody was
| helping. Those machines are so shitty, they've gotten
| better but I still try not to use them.
| m-ee wrote:
| The checkout situation alone has made it so I haven't
| gone to my local Safeway in almost two years except to
| use the DMV registration machine. The self checkout is
| almost unusable, and ever since the private equity buyout
| years ago I've never seen more than two normal registers
| open at once.
| taurath wrote:
| Private equity is synonymous with "customers and
| employees will suffer" in my mind.
|
| I get really miffed at how our system of economics seems
| set up to destroy rather than promote the common good.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Oh the anxiety of having kids and those. Every single
| bump set it off and required someone to come over.
|
| More then a few carts got left half unloaded.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| It's great when you want to buy a few things. It's
| terrible if you have a cart full of things.
| smegger001 wrote:
| it depends for me it is almost universally better unless
| something has a security device on it. on the other hand
| i worked as a cashier and latter lead cashier (i trained
| all the new cashiers on how to use the register) for
| years while in collage. So I can get through my cart much
| faster than most whoever is working the check out just
| because i know whats coming and what should be bagged
| together optimally. and then also the lack of forced
| social interaction makes me far happier.
| grasshopperpurp wrote:
| This is how I view it. There's a Publix just down the
| street from my work, and I always use self-checkout
| there, but when we're shopping for home (full cart), we
| don't even consider it an option. I don't think Publix
| checks your cart or anything, so it's not about that.
| Last time we went shopping, there wasn't a bagger, and we
| didn't mind, so that's not it either. I think it's just
| that it's a lot quicker for them to scan your items, and
| you don't have to pay extra attention to make sure you've
| scanned everything.
|
| Related, Publix is one of the South's top selling points.
| It's easily the best grocery store I've used. Up until I
| moved to Florida and experienced Publix, all grocery
| stores felt more or less the same.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I look forward to a car-wash pickup. You arrive. They scan
| your plate. You go through the 5 minute car wash and at the
| end they fill your trunk.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| In 1982 Wal-Mart was still exclusively a rural retailer,
| continuing to build scale but only in towns below a certain
| size.
|
| It was not felt they could yet compete with more well-funded
| better-established chains. Most stores more closely resembled
| today's Dollar General than a big box There were not yet
| "superstores", and most people in big cities had never heard of
| them.
|
| With IBM PC's not yet having a significant impact on business,
| and almost nobody doing any data networking compared to today,
| Wal-Mart already had a fully computerized
| POS/inventory/logistics-management system in every store,
| integrated into their headquarters in small-town Arkansas in
| almost real-time, with data-mining informing the financial
| decision making.
|
| No one else had anything close, not Sears, Target, or Kmart,
| who were obviously going to end up having difficulty when Sam
| thought the time was right for Wal-Mart to come to the big
| cities.
|
| Even though all these retailers had the same computer hardware
| in their respective headquarters, IBM's good old "impersonal"
| mainframes which only big companies could afford.
|
| Walton would bus all his managers to Bentonville for a pow-wow
| every year, scheduled to start at 8 all week.
|
| If you got there precisely at 8, you had already missed the
| most important half-hour with Sam, he would start at 0730.
|
| Drove an old pickup truck too, so he could save money.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > allowing Amazon's rise
|
| By doing what, clearing out the rest of the local competition?
| internetslave wrote:
| Walmart doesn't pay that well and isn't regarded as a great
| tech place to work. It's a good job, but someone who's really
| serious about programming wouldn't work there
| nly wrote:
| It is surprising what businesses _have_ managed to keep up with
| Amazon.
|
| I was amazed last year to find Argos, a traditional bricks and
| mortar catalogue based outlet here in the UK, now offer a good
| website and next day delivery to most of the mainland, and at
| competitive prices.
| turtlebits wrote:
| The Walmart in-store pickup/returns experience is horrible.
| Long lines, employees are slow and unorganized. Several times
| I've gone to pick up an order and waited an addition 10+
| minutes to have someone bring the item to the front of the
| store.
|
| I would say the only thing that makes them competitive is their
| price.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Something to be said for just being able to walk in and do
| all your shopping for everything from groceries to clothes to
| televisions.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >I would say the only thing that makes them competitive is
| their price
|
| That's the entire story of Walmart. Pretty much the only
| person that smiles is the greeter, and they aren't always
| very friendly.
| kube-system wrote:
| I personally haven't seen a Walmart greeter smile since
| they had smiley stickers.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I forgot all about Jet until you just mentioned them. I should
| look into them as an amazon replacement.
| ramphastidae wrote:
| Jet is gone. Shame, I was a fan.
| bushbaba wrote:
| And yet I don't use them. I use Etsy. I use chewy. I use other
| niche e-commerce but I never use Walmart online.
|
| They can't just replicate Amazon they have to be better than
| Amazon.
| megablast wrote:
| You do food shopping on Etsy?? Ok.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They are better than Amazon. You can filter search results on
| Walmart so that you don't see third party reseller Aliexpress
| garbage and only stuff sourced by Walmart themselves.
|
| Last I checked, Amazon had removed that option as of maybe a
| decade ago, and they commingle inventory so they do not
| assure me of any supply chain integrity.
|
| And they are more expensive for any dense, heavy, especially
| liquid products.
| bushbaba wrote:
| I honestly just don't care. If I want high quality I don't
| go to Amazon I go elsewhere to niche retailers.
|
| I never went to Walmart for better quality. Heck that's why
| I personally use target more now. Slightly higher price and
| slightly better quality.
| lostapathy wrote:
| Does that filtering on Walmart's website actually work,
| though? It's broken half the time I try it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't use their website much, but that would be a shame
| if true. I did notice on the left I can checkmark Walmart
| as the seller.
| lostapathy wrote:
| Yeah, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Really I shop walmart first check amazon for products not
| available. Usually works out cheaper. Etsy for which
| products?
| bushbaba wrote:
| Amazon's my go to e-commerce place. I use chewy for dog
| things due to the 30% auto ship price hack. And niche sites
| for all else.
|
| Amazon just has a superior webpage and shopping experience
| than all the other major players.
|
| If it's a big ticket item I might get it from a retail
| store. But with the recent kohls Amazon return policy I'm
| slowly changing that behavior as well.
| afavour wrote:
| I don't think there's a big crossover between things people
| buy on Etsy and things they buy on Walmart.
|
| I wouldn't say they're replicating Amazon, they're a brick
| and mortar chain with thousands of locations. That's
| definitely a potential edge over Amazon.
| andreilys wrote:
| In the last 20 years they're stock has only gone up 150%....
|
| Yes that's better than bankruptcy but Walmart is a far cry from
| a successful old incumbent being able to address new upstarts.
|
| Also what makes you say Walmart Labs has great tech and hires
| top software talent?
|
| A quick look on Glassdoor shows the salary is quite low (esp.
| as it's based in San Bruno). I know plenty of new grads that
| are earning much more, even at non-FANG company. I imagine like
| most incumbents, Walmart underinvests in tech because they see
| it as a cost center.
|
| _The typical Walmart Labs Software Engineer salary is
| $116,635. Software Engineer salaries at Walmart Labs can range
| from $66,567 - $184,513._
|
| https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Walmart-Labs-Software-Engin...
| sgsgsgsdgd wrote:
| Glassdoor numbers are inaccurate and 99% of the time only
| reflect base salary for every company I've looked up.
|
| Stick with levels.fyi
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/company/Walmart-
| Labs/salaries/Softwar...
|
| While their RSUs are not at a FAANG level, the base + bonus
| are more than in line with top paying companies in CA.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| _In the last 20 years they're stock has only gone up
| 150%...._
|
| To be fair, they've been paying ~ 2% dividend yield that
| whole time. Still, if your comp is mostly in stock, those
| dividend payments hurt versus something like a buyback.
| gruez wrote:
| >To be fair, they've been paying ~ 2% dividend yield that
| whole time.
|
| If you check the total return price, they're actually doing
| better than the s&p 500.
|
| total return for walmart: 223%
| (https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/total_return_price)
|
| total return for S&P 500: 221%
| (https://ycharts.com/companies/SPY/total_return_price)
| kgantchev wrote:
| So they're an average corp...
| sumedh wrote:
| For a giant company, isnt that a good thing?
| kgantchev wrote:
| It's expected that some of them would be about average
| (relative to other giant corps).
| maxtheman wrote:
| Dividends don't always "hurt". They let one automatically
| claim profits on a trade, without the hassle of divesting
| shares.
| gruez wrote:
| With trades being commission-free these days, that
| benefit is negligible. Even with $10 trades (the usual
| price before commission free trades), and you withdrawing
| $20k from your retirement account annually, once a month,
| that works out to a drag of 0.6%. OTOH there's a very
| real downside to getting paid dividends (and incurring a
| taxable event) when your income is high (eg. making 400k
| bay area salary. If it was poured into the stock price
| instead, you could wait until you retire and get taxed on
| a lower marginal rate.
| Asymmetryk wrote:
| you enjoy your annual ex/cum-divi volatility and applying
| income tax and potentially overseas withholding taxes and
| exemptions and treaties rules?
|
| the administration and process involved in setting
| dividends isn't very trivial either
|
| and too often maintenance of dividend payments are
| placebos for lackadaisical areas of more important
| management responsibility
|
| and it's too common for factions in the boardroom to be
| trying to serve and attract entirely different types of
| investors who would be better served with tracking stocks
| or demergers and so on
|
| for some people any dividend unsupported by a very clear
| rationale is a red light but of course if you are doing
| in depth company analysis you may have all of this
| covered in your models and settlement and actions
| systems.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| What I mean is, if I get a stock grant spread out over
| four years, then the shares I receive in year 4 have
| implicitly had their value decreased by the dividends
| paid out in years 1-3.
| laurent92 wrote:
| But that assumes the company has the choice of keeping
| dividends and investing it smartly.
| toast0 wrote:
| Depends on the stock based compensation; some of them will
| be adjusted for dividends paid during vesting, and some
| won't.
| kortilla wrote:
| Glassdoor grossly underreports the range of tech salaries to
| the point of being useless.
|
| Something tells me only people who feel insecure about their
| pay report it to Glassdoor...
|
| Point being, Glassdoor data is so incomplete that I don't
| think you can meaningfully compare even two companies on it.
| Especially if they have different comp structures.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I figured it was because they have old data but I noticed
| the same.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| They could have been Sears, but they haven't made it far
| enough. They're doing enough to survive, but they're acting
| reactively, not proactively, to a changing environment. They
| will never come close to exceeding Amazon's level of
| innovation, for better or for worse. I think pointing to Jet
| detracts from their progress, given the Jet acquisition was a
| complete flop. They're fighting with everything they've got.
| But not even Walmart can truly compete. It's unclear if its
| talent, a leadership issue, the company's brand, or what
| exactly is holding Walmart back. I suppose that's good for
| Walmart: a lot of the elements look right to position them
| well. They just haven't figured it out 100%.
| kortilla wrote:
| > They will never come close to exceeding Amazon's level of
| innovation, for better or for worse
|
| Amazon stopped innovating as a store 5-10 years ago. Nothing
| has meaningfully changed for the better and things have
| gotten worse on the front of fake reviews and counterfeit
| products.
|
| Amazon spent its innovation on AWS, which is not even the
| same industry Walmart is operating in.
| lolsal wrote:
| The biggest thing keeping me from shopping at Walmart is their
| anti-competitive and predatory behavior and the way they treat
| their employees and vendors.
|
| Nothing else really matters to me regarding Walmart. There's no
| subscription service that would get me to shop at Walmart more
| than I do today (which is zero). There's no competitor that could
| decline in such a way that I would shop at Walmart. I know many
| in my social circles feel the same way.
| grillvogel wrote:
| do you shop at amazon or target?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| There are no ethical global multinational companies, sorry to
| burst your bubble. Every other giant retailer is doing the same
| to employees, vendors, etc.
| rsuelzer wrote:
| Walmart really started the race to the bottom, killed
| countless good paying retail jobs (many union), so I choose
| to hold them accountable, even if it's irrational at this
| point given their competition (Amazon) is arguably just as
| bad or worse.
| xeromal wrote:
| Costco treats their employees very well comparitvely.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Where do you shop that isn't roughly as bad on at least one if
| those factors?
| pessimizer wrote:
| They're all terrible; as a customer I actually love the way
| they abuse their vendors - Walmart is not going to be happy a
| lot of returns on your product, they'll just find another
| vendor. It's like the anti-Amazon, everything I buy from
| Walmart works well. If both Amazon and Walmart are slime, I'm
| going to Walmart.
| leetrout wrote:
| They are anti consumer on returns lately.
|
| I bought a Keurig that broke on the 3rd day and they wouldn't
| take it back because I bought the extra warranty they sell on
| them.
|
| Warranty company wouldn't do anything because it was within
| the store refund timeframe.
|
| I've not had that problem with Amazon.
| LegitShady wrote:
| >I bought a Keurig that broke on the 3rd day and they
| wouldn't take it back because I bought the extra warranty
| they sell on them.
|
| They wouldn't take something back within the return period
| because you bought an extra warranty? What am I missing
| here? How did they justify it?
| leetrout wrote:
| The warranty they up sell at checkout isn't through
| Walmart which I didn't know at the time but of course
| learned real quick.
|
| The store manager eventually told me they would not
| accept the return on anything that had the extended
| warranty which is conveniently right on the receipt.
|
| So this is the second time trying to return it when I
| wait to get a manager so I went to my car and called the
| warranty place again (Asserion) and got an agent on the
| line. Told the agent I called the day before, followed
| the advice to come back and get a manager and it didn't
| work and she agreed to stay on the line while I walked
| back in the store to get the manager again.
|
| She was awesome and a total boss. I put her on speaker,
| told the employee at the returns desk she'd speak to me
| and the manager and we waited five more minutes on him.
|
| When he came back again I told the manager I had the
| warranty company on the phone refusing to service the
| contract and she rattled off all the info he needed to
| hear and what Asserions policies were and that he needed
| to do the manufacturer return on his side. 10/10 great
| experience with her.
|
| Then he said go get one off the shelf and take the swap.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Sounds like a rogue manager, but if it's policy it needs
| to be public so that people stop buying the extended
| warranty.
|
| Even though you're over with it now, I would escalate
| this to walmart corporate and see if they have this as
| official policy or not. It seems to me like the manager
| tried to commit fraud unless he can point to where that's
| official policy or not.
|
| Either way I wouldn't buy an asserion/asurion warranty
| for any amount of money.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I don't shop there because I take pride in the things I own and
| prefer quality. They sell specially cheapened versions of
| popular brands (e.g. Tide) and their store is filled with low-
| quality products.
|
| It's sad because Walmart Labs has been one of the few groups
| from a big company putting money behind Clojure/script, which I
| would like to see succeed.
| leetrout wrote:
| I've never heard about cheapened brand products like Tide.
|
| Do you have more information?
| user3939382 wrote:
| Here's an article that touches on it:
| https://reclaimdemocracy.org/walmart-product-quality-
| durabil...
|
| Basically, Walmart is responsible for so much of some
| products' sales, they dictate the price to the
| manufacturer. Manufacturers respond by producing special
| versions of products to meet their price demands.
|
| Product quality is sort of a hobby/passion for me. Most
| popular brands these days prioritize price wayyy over
| quality. Even without Walmart, finding well-made products
| is difficult, inside a Walmart, I don't even bother looking
| anymore.
| ourmandave wrote:
| If they're worried about Instacart, that might be why they
| deliver things I order on Sunday that afternoon even when I
| qualify for free shipping by ordering over $45 (or some amount).
|
| I don't expect it for a couple days but if it's in the local
| store they have random people bag and deliver it within hours.
| Even on a Sunday.
| velgewp wrote:
| Walmart can do anything to tacle this threat as they are now
| creating their own ecosystem of devices like laptop, smartphone,
| smart tvs and will sell in their stores to maximize profit...
|
| Reference - Walmart's first Android TVs will be officially
| released next week - https://techplanet.today/post/walmarts-
| first-android-tvs-wil...
| yalogin wrote:
| It's great to see they are brutally honest with themselves, I
| didn't expect anything else.
|
| Walmart's problem is with urban and close urban centers. Their
| image in these areas is in the dumpster. I don't know how they
| can improve it either. The one thing that could help is to throw
| their color palette out and pick a vibrant one. Their stores look
| really dull.
| Firebrand wrote:
| I wonder what happened with Walmart's partnership with TikTok and
| if they've given up on their social media/e-commerce ambitions:
|
| https://www.vox.com/recode/21448460/walmart-tiktok-amazon-de...
|
| They were very eager to beat Amazon on bringing the QVC style
| online video commerce that's super popular in China to the U.S.,
| but I haven't seen much about it since. I guess like convincing
| teens to buy clothing that their favorite influencer was wearing
| from Walmart.com was too tall an order.
| rsuelzer wrote:
| I avoid Walmart because of their absolutely terrible treatment of
| their employees, the fact the have failed to provide decent wages
| or benefits for their workers, drove a race to the bottom in
| retail and did this almost entirely to the benefit of five
| children who were lucky to be born with the last name Walton and
| are now the richest family in America. The corporation is seared
| in my mind as the ugliest side of American corporate greed with a
| total disregard of social responsibility.
|
| Only very recently did Walmart even attempt to bring up wages,
| and it's not because they felt some accountability for decimating
| small towns and family owned businesses, but because they were
| becoming a dinosaur and suddenly had to compete for workers who
| would rather work someplace that paid more, even if only
| marginally and exploited them a little less brazenly.
| galgalesh wrote:
| When I visit other countries, I always visit the Cheapest
| supermarkets, just to see the people working there. Zwitserland
| was amazing: happy, healthy people who clearly loved their job.
| The US much less so.
| frankish wrote:
| To your point, Dan Price recently posted some related stats and
| perspective:
|
| > Minimum wage
|
| > Costco: $16
|
| > Walmart: $11
|
| >
|
| > Average pay
|
| > Costco: $24
|
| > Walmart: $15
|
| >
|
| > Employees on food stamps (subsidized by you)
|
| > Costco: Virtually none
|
| > Walmart: More than any other company
|
| >
|
| > Founder net worth
|
| > Costco: not a billionaire
|
| > Walmart: $220+ billion; up $30 billion in the pandemic
|
| >
|
| > Both companies have similar business models and charge the
| same low prices. One decided to treat its employees like humans
| and forgo enormous profits, and the other one took the opposite
| track.
|
| >
|
| > Business is about choices.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Costco's customers are the top 3 socioeconomic quintiles,
| Walmart's customers are the bottom 3 (or middle 3).
|
| Either way, Costco's customers are richer, and they have a
| different business model. They are objectively a good
| employer, but a lot of that has to do with their customer not
| being extremely price sensitive and being able to afford to
| buy large quantities, which also results in less loss due to
| theft.
|
| You can find the richer parts of any town by searching for
| Costco.
|
| As for founder net worth, it's not very meaningful if a
| founder owns it or others own it in 401k. Divide the Walmart
| founder net worth by employees and it still would not give
| them a meaningful improvement in wages for long. They're
| simply a low margin business selling to customers who cannot
| afford to spend extra.
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