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I hate Walmart. They have almost no lighting. It's dark and depressing. There is almost no personnel to help, and they look depressed. The whole environment is one big depressing, nasty place.
Not just that, but I've compared prices (for food at least) in the few times I've been to Walmart, and they are lower at Publix Supermarkets, which is a really nice chain of supermarkets in which the employees are the stock owners. Publix has a huge poster board at the exit comparing Walmart food prices with Publix food prices, and the differences are dramatic. Walmart sucks and I'm not even going into the heinous business practices they have. Those are legendary.
Must have been damn few times .
And actually Publix prices can't be lower since WalMart price matches.
Must have been damn few times .
And actually Publix prices can't be lower since WalMart price matches.
Only on advertised prices and you have to bring the actual newspaper ad with you. I tried that once. Target (across the street) was $15 cheaper than WMT and they wouldn't match the price. When I asked for a refund they tried to give me a hard time. Thankfully, a manager overheard and solved the issue by grabbing a local ad from the backroom and giving me a refund.
Wmt's advantage is having a wide selection, not prices.
"The focus is not simply on labor cost. In fact, the most significant metric is speed to market. According to Campbell, the cycle time for introducing a new refrigerator or water heater to the market is significantly reduced when design and manufacturing are both done in the United States."
"In addition to measuring quality, the company quantified all of the costs of outsourcing, making sure that they were comprehensive and thorough in their approach. Many of its metrics coincide with those that writer Brendan Koerner identifies in his brilliant, recent article in Wired, which examines why companies have started to "buck the offshoring trend." The people on Campbell's team projected wage increases in China and also the likely appreciation of the Chinese currency in upcoming years. They looked at rising shipping costs and accounted for the inevitable transportation costs associated with fixing a product with defects. They considered the savings on raw materials that would result from an integrated environment of design and sourcing."
Nope, manufacturing jobs are NEVER going to return. Just ignore the fact that they have started to do so, and this is only one (albeit prominent,) example.
Must have been damn few times .
And actually Publix prices can't be lower since WalMart price matches.
Why on earth would I want to go through the drudgery of "price-matching" at a place that is ugly, depressing, with depressed employees, where the food does not look clean, where the food does not look fresh, where the meat is so scary-looking it makes my hair stand on end, and on top of it, where the business practices suck so much it's enough to make one cringe? Hmmmmmm? Now why would I put myself through that sh_t unless I were a f masochist?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by swagger
Please, spit out your gum before you bite your tongue off.
Still want to say that nobody's comparing Costco to Wal*Mart? That's just a few post from the first five pages of the thread. I'm sure that I could find a lot more if I'd read through the full sixteen.
Costco and Target doesnt look like Costco and Wal Mart to me.
and the link (that you left out of the quote) clearly says
Quote:
Consider Costco and Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club, which compete fiercely on low-price merchandise. Among warehouse retailers, Costco—with 338 stores and 67,600 full-time employees in the United States—is number one, accounting for about 50% of the market. Sam’s Club—with 551 stores and 110,200 employees in the United States—is number two, with about 40% of the market.
Though the businesses are direct competitors and quite similar overall, a remarkable disparity shows up in their wage and benefits structures. The average wage at Costco is $17 an hour. Wal-Mart does not break out the pay of its Sam’s Club workers, but a full-time worker at Wal-Mart makes $10.11 an hour on average, and a variety of sources suggest that Sam’s Club’s pay scale is similar to Wal-Mart’s. A 2005 New York Times article by Steven Greenhouse reported that at $17 an hour, Costco’s average pay is 72% higher than Sam’s Club’s ($9.86 an hour). Interviews that a colleague and I conducted with a dozen Sam’s Club employees in San Francisco and Denver put the average hourly wage at about $10. And a 2004 BusinessWeek article by Stanley Holmes and Wendy Zellner estimated Sam’s Club’s average hourly wage at $11.52.
Interesting stuff. It seems Costco is supporting the call to increase the minimum wage as it already pays significantly higher wages to its employees. I can see why they'd want their competitors to also pay higher wages though really I don't think most retailers can match the higher wages Costco pays its employees. Currently, Costco starts all employees out at at least $11.50 per hour but employees can get more for experience or for working in higher skilled areas. Even part time employees also get health care, dental & vision care, paid sick time off, 401k with partial matching payments, an employee stock purchase program where they can buy shares at discounted rates, and things like tuition reimbursement so employees can pursue higher education. That's not bad for a retail gig where no experience is necessary.
Interesting factoid I learned from this article: Retail wages have declined 30% since 2007 mostly due to fewer hours but also because retailers have fired higher paid staff and replaced them with lower wage staff. I did not know that.
An interesting article from Harvard Business Review which compares Costco to Sam's Club head to head. It says Costco pays it's employees ~$17 per hour on average while Sam's Club pays an average of $10.11 for all employees. What's more is a Costco store has almost 50% more employees per store yet manages to sell 75% more per square foot of retail space. Customers site better quality products and better customer service as their main reasons for preferring Costco to Sam's Club.
Earlier this month Forbes Magazine also did a direct comparison between Sam's Club and Costco and found that even though Sam's Club has almost 20% more stores than Costco the later outsell's Walmart's club store by almost 2:1 in total sales. There is a lot of interesting stuff there which shows there is more to running a good retail business than just paying workers the lowest possible prices.
they may have been saying "Wal Mart" in the post, but the data they were debating from was from that link which is talking about WalMart's SAM's club.
im going to go ahead and quote the whole post so that you dont have to look for it or claim that i cant back up what i say
Costco is more tolerable than Walmart, but I barely get anything there. Books are expensive, I don't need 100 croissants, 20 lettuces, 20 lbs of cheese, and 5000 plastic cups. I do go with my sister once in a blue moon Saturday mornings (she shops there), mostly to talk with my sister and sample the foods. Never been to Sam's Club. Walmart has already left me with a negative attitude about anything related to Walmart.
Only on advertised prices and you have to bring the actual newspaper ad with you. I tried that once. Target (across the street) was $15 cheaper than WMT and they wouldn't match the price. When I asked for a refund they tried to give me a hard time. Thankfully, a manager overheard and solved the issue by grabbing a local ad from the backroom and giving me a refund.
Wmt's advantage is having a wide selection, not prices.
Depends on items, I find wal-mart consistently lower in price on grocery items (produce/dairy/meat) than the local Target and/or Kroger owned stores (king soopers/etc)
Wal-mart is harly hurting and i don't thni its goig anywhere .wishful thinking on some people's part.
Walmart did a very smart thing - it destroys small businesses until there's nowhere else to go to but that stinking, dark, depressing, giant piece of crap, Walmart. Our country is now littered with places where the ONLY place left to shop is that disgusting, nasty place. There are a handful of places trying to stop Walmart's cancerous destruction.
Target is hardly better than Wal-Mart. I shop at Target much more frequently than Wal-Mart, but that has as much to do with the Target's much more convenient location than anything else. My local Target has as much trouble keeping their shelves stocked as the Wal-Mart does, plus Target keeps jacking up prices on everything. Not that their prices were all that low to begin with!
Quote:
Originally Posted by wutitiz
I started going to Walmart last year because it was conveniently located to my job. I was really surprised at how often I go in there to buy something, and the shelf is bare. That is anathema in retail, because that lost sale means lost profit.
Indeed. Wal-Mart has gotten bad for this, but Target and Sam's (yes, I know it's Wal-Mart) aren't much better.
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I do go with my sister once in a blue moon Saturday mornings (she shops there), mostly to talk with my sister and sample the foods. Never been to Sam's Club. Walmart has already left me with a negative attitude about anything related to Walmart.
