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Yesterday, I did my weekly Walmart grocery shopping and had a pretty negative experience. My cashier was rude and apparently didn't know how to work the Walmart Pay. She just told me it won't connect and didn't give me any option of trying again. Begrudgingly, I pulled out another credit card and paid manually. Ridiculous Walmart. You offer a new service and then tell me I can't use it?
I really starting thinking about the current state of Walmart. I didn't have a good experience. Then again, when was the last time I did have a good experience at Walmart? I go to the store out of necessity and with almost a sense of dread. Case in point. Recently I bought all my groceries and loaded them in my car. Then I realized that I forgot to buy bottled water. I stood in the parking lot pondering if that bottled water was worth the effort of having to go back in the store. I decided screw it, I'm going home. That's not a good sign when your consumers feel like shopping at your store is more of a burden.
I found myself wondering if the Walmart business model is just antiquated. In the era of online shopping, having a massive retail store space footprint just makes the shopping experience feel tiresome when you have to go from one end of the store to the other. Walmart also just feels grimy to me. I feel almost dirty shopping at Walmart and the bathrooms are usually filthy. Part of it is due to the "people of walmart" type consumers, but another is due to Walmart stores just being old. When I go into Target, the store feels clean and pristine. Almost shiny. I only get that same impression when I'm at a brand new or recently opened Walmart.
In the years ahead, I think retail in general is going to struggle against the might of Amazon who seeks to making online shopping even more easy and convenient although the retail stores are evolving in positive directions in order to survive. In this aspect, Walmart lags behind the others. I recently tried out making an order online with Target for store pickup. I was really impressed with how fast and easy the process was. I I went to the customer service register at the front, gave them my name and they went behind a shelf and brought out my product. Walmart offers the same ship to store, but why would anyone bother? You have to hack your way to the back of the store to the pickup area and often there is no one at the counter. I tried it once, and it look like 10 minutes for the guy to go in the back and find my order. It totally defeats the benefit of convenience of ordering it online.
Also, other stores have apps, reward programs, all kinds of offers. For example, Target gave me $15 in free gift cards for buying a certain product. When as Walmart even given out gift cards? Never! Prices are generally low, but they rarely if ever change at Walmart. No deals, digital coupons, reward points, nothing. Walmart does have Savings Catcher, but after being nearly $1000 in products at Walmart, I've only received about $15 cash back. It's not even worth the effort for that kind of return.
Walmart has taken a leap ahead of the competition by rolling out a parking lot pickup service. I haven't tried it so I can't comment , but such a service needs to be fast and accurate. I don't want to place an order online only to be sitting in the parking lot for 30 min waiting for someone to show up with my order.
Walmart is so ingrained in the shopping culture that it's hard to imagine they could go out of business, but the news of a recently large layoff can't be a good sign. Evolve or die. That's a lesson that Sears and Radio Shack did not learn.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Amazon is making a considerable effort to grab the typical lower income customers from Walmart. I think there will always be those that shop at Walmart in some area, but there will be fewer stores, with those less productive closing.
There are a couple of grocery stores here locally that have adopted what they call "ClickList" shopping or similar, where you pick out your goods online, select a pickup date and time, show up then and call a phone number and an associate brings it all out to you bagged and ready to go. Turns what could be an unpleasant 1 hour shopping trip into an easy 10 minute one. I think in order for stores like Wal-Mart to have any shot of enduring the changing times they're going to have to adopt a program like this or somehow similar.
Of interest, Sam's Club has created an app where you scan items as you put them into your cart, when you're done shopping you 'check out' on your phone and pay directly from your phone. You keep the payment confirmation up on your phone and show it to the person waiting by the door on your way out and you're done.
One way or the other, having people wait in lines in your store is going to be the undoing of brick and mortar retail businesses.
Both of the Walmart stores within 20 miles are slammed 24 hours a day. The clerks are slow and not much help, but that seems to be the norm in almost all stores.
The big problem with Walmart is the over-crowded parking lot. I won't go to the one closest to me because I can't face the parking lot.
I don't think that over-crowded parking lot is any indication that the store is going out of business.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,576 posts, read 81,167,557 times
Reputation: 57813
Quote:
Originally Posted by ahawes
There are a couple of grocery stores here locally that have adopted what they call "ClickList" shopping or similar, where you pick out your goods online, select a pickup date and time, show up then and call a phone number and an associate brings it all out to you bagged and ready to go. Turns what could be an unpleasant 1 hour shopping trip into an easy 10 minute one. I think in order for stores like Wal-Mart to have any shot of enduring the changing times they're going to have to adopt a program like this or somehow similar.
Of interest, Sam's Club has created an app where you scan items as you put them into your cart, when you're done shopping you 'check out' on your phone and pay directly from your phone. You keep the payment confirmation up on your phone and show it to the person waiting by the door on your way out and you're done.
One way or the other, having people wait in lines in your store is going to be the undoing of brick and mortar retail businesses.
I hate shopping but have never spent an hour, and rarely have to wait in lines. Our local Costco had short lines, a new one opened up even closer and it has no lines, even for gas we always just pull up to an empty pump. We can spend $200 or so at Costco and be out in 20 minutes. When we do have to go to a supermarket, we just grab what we need, use the self-check and are out in 5 minutes. I think many people actually enjoy wandering around looking at everything, but if you stick to what you need and know where it's located, grocery shopping is fast and easy. Of course, we use Amazon and other online sellers for most everything else.
I hate shopping but have never spent an hour, and rarely have to wait in lines. Our local Costco had short lines, a new one opened up even closer and it has no lines, even for gas we always just pull up to an empty pump. We can spend $200 or so at Costco and be out in 20 minutes. When we do have to go to a supermarket, we just grab what we need, use the self-check and are out in 5 minutes. I think many people actually enjoy wandering around looking at everything, but if you stick to what you need and know where it's located, grocery shopping is fast and easy. Of course, we use Amazon and other online sellers for most everything else.
I think I am a bit jaded because I just left the West TX oilfield where it was ALWAYS a 1+ hour experience with long line crowded aisles, insane parking lot etc.
Both of the Walmart stores within 20 miles are slammed 24 hours a day. The clerks are slow and not much help, but that seems to be the norm in almost all stores.
The big problem with Walmart is the over-crowded parking lot. I won't go to the one closest to me because I can't face the parking lot.
I don't think that over-crowded parking lot is any indication that the store is going out of business.
I think that this is the feeling that will eventually kill Wal-Mart if changes are not made. The shopping experience at most all Wal-Marts just sucks. It amazes me that everyone can hate Wal-Mart so much and yet still shop there.
Equating the experience at one store to a companywide malaise is foolish. If you got a bag of bad potatoes would you claim that potatoes are on their way out in this generation?
Walmart has been aggressively building an online presence (FULL of flaws at this point, but it will sort out) to compete head to head with Amazon. Anti-monopoly laws alone indicate that a lock on that market by Amazon is impossible.
With all of the Sears and K-Marts (which were the major direct competitor) crashing and burning, those customers now shop Walmart. Kill off department stores like Macy's Kohl, and J C Penney and the idea of a dwindling customer base for Walmart begins to look stupid.
Mounting an effective competition to a Juggernaut like Walmart would be nearly impossible at this point. If the market dominance continues, it is as likely that an enforced breakup of the company would be pushed by regulators to open the market.
In truth, the entire history of business over the past 30-35 years has been the destruction of the traditional distribution channel. From the breakup of Bell to Wal-Mart turning retail on its ear to iTunes to Amazon, how we shop and buy is radically different than what it was in 1980. However, it's interesting to see how one of the earliest beneficiaries of this revolution, Wal-Mart, will navigate things as this trend reaches its conclusion.
Nothing is forever. Witness Sears. Right now, you can pretty much reverse engineer Wal-Mart commercials (Or really anyone else's) on TV to figure out what's going on at this point. I've noticed they've moved away from hammering away on low-price and spent more time talking about shopping experience. That might partly be due to customer complaints about service. It might be partly a move to counter inroads made by Amazon into consumer share of mind. What's more, Millennials tend to be far more concerned than Baby Boomers about how that product made it into stores than their predecessors in terms of workplace conditions, environmental consequences, etc.
But the biggest threat to Wal-Mart isn't Amazon at this point. It's that we've pretty much passed peak consumer spending for Baby Boomers, whereas Millennials aren't necessarily spending at the same rate. Part of this might be due to the fact that Millennials have to spend a far higher percentage of income on housing and education than the average Baby Boomer did. Part of it might be, and I know this is completely subjective, that Millennials may be less attracted by the consumer society.
If you look at a bunch of disconnected phenomena such as the rise of the tiny house movement, infill into the inner cities, and even the rise of craft beer and the success of the documentary Minimalism, I think that a good proportion of the Millennials are rejecting the kind of unfettered mass consumerism that made Wal-Mart the juggernaut it is today. I mean, if you want a good metric, savings rates among Millennials are far higher than Baby Boomers. And if they're saving, they're not spending.
I have no idea if this trend will last, but I wouldn't discount it. And if Millennials are saving at a rate 1/3 higher than Baby Boomers and have to spend more of their income on housing and student loans, then that's less they have to spend at your local retailer. What's more, Millennials tend to value shopping experience far less than their older counterparts. Need an example? Buying a car. The traditional method is to slog over to the car lot, take a test drive and haggle with the sales manager for hours on end. About as much fun as a root canal, right? Suddenly, sites such as Carvana are offering a different distribution channel. And Carvana's sales have gone from $40 million to an estimated $300 million in just three years, and that's been done on the back of older Millennials. Or companies such as Shipt (Haven't heard of them? Don't worry, you will) that are doing the shopping for you. Yeah, it means you pay more for groceries, but Millennials value their time even more than their cash.
Need another example? Grocery
To me, this speaks volumes about a different, emerging buying pattern. So, there might be a peak over the next several years as Millennials come into their own and Baby Boomers spending slows down. But if I were Wal-Mart, I'd start thinking about a completely different kind of future -- and fast.
Both of the Walmart stores within 20 miles are slammed 24 hours a day. The clerks are slow and not much help, but that seems to be the norm in almost all stores.
The big problem with Walmart is the over-crowded parking lot. I won't go to the one closest to me because I can't face the parking lot.
I don't think that over-crowded parking lot is any indication that the store is going out of business.
Maybe. But I think the sense of dread people feel about negotiating the overcrowded parking lot might leave a mark. It is pretty much an ordeal to go there. We avoid it at all costs.
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