Curious what you're thinking when you make such a blanket statement.
Just my .02, I think that the rise of the low-service giant chain stores have taken away local community uniqueness and neighborliness, among other things. Those are the kinds of things that will never show up in the numbers on a Walmart "local contribution sign" posted in their stores.
It's gotten to where if you were Rip van Winkle and woke up anywhere in America on a given day, you'd be hard-pressed to figure out where the hell you were, because it's all starting to look spookingly the same.
I don't think that's at issue here. I was referring to how businesses contribute to the community by sponsoring fund raising drives for good causes, offer free services like hazardous waste recycling or free delivery for seniors, or who participate in local school programs, etc etc etc. Generally speaking the big-box retailers will only do such things if a community imposes specific requirements on them. In the case of San Francisco, Home Depot for example made a bunch of promises in this area, and then when it looked like they were going to win approval, backed down on half of them or triangulated their way out of them.
There are certain local businesses that are still somewhat immune to predation by national chains (ie locksmiths) and as a result most of us will patronize them because they remain a dominant option, but this certainly isn't the case with other retail categories like hardware or office-supply stores.
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To be clear, "my own take" is based on community involvement (chamber of commerce, local governments, local school systems) as well as direct personal knowledge of local businesses.
I was in the Antioch Home Depot store this morning, and customer service was excellent. I've had similarly good experience recently in Concord, San Ramon, and Pleasanton.
For good reason: The local Ace and True Value hardware stores in this area have mostly been dreadful -- high prices, poor selection, spotty service. Notable exceptions include Pleasanton Hardware, which finally closed recently, and Danville Hardware, which does a good job of competing on the basis of local convenience.
It's silly sound bite that doesn't stand up to any serious scrutiny.
Agreed. But communities support those stores.
Agreed. But that's what consumers appear to want.
I'll wager that the large stores make far larger cash and other contributions than the Mom and Pop shops.
Yes, a lot of shennanigans take place between those corporations and the cities. I witnessed very closely some of the games that went on between Home Depot and the City of Mountain View in recent years.
In my view, the cities are equally if not more guilty of greed and poor integrity than the retail corporations.
I must say Philip J. Koenig, your posts on this thread have been spot on. I especially enjoyed your analysis of JN. Kudos.
WalMart - who can stand?
Try Googling: WalMart Cathedral City, California and see what comes up.
Read of: "PAYING THE PRICE AT WAL-MART" here:
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My only compliment to WalMart is their preparedness and response to Hurricane Katrina. I have to give them credit there. They put FEMA to shame.
I used to shop WalMart several years ago, but I can hardly stand going there anymore. My list of complaints is long. My favorite big box store of comparison is Target.
Home Depot is not on my list of favorites either, although they are not as far down as WalMart. My favorite home improvement store of comparison is Lowes.
I still frequent the smaller retailers, but sometimes they just don't have what one needs.
Both of which, in general, sell essentially the same products you can get elsewhere, for a significant price premium. Must be the cost of all that excessive marketing and branding.
The Home Depot near me is a mixed bag. They often will have one knowledgeable person in each department, but you have to happen to be shopping when that person is there.
I especially like the employee who tell you where to buy stuff cheaper than Home Depot!
In my area, Home Depot apparently drove a local lumber store out of business, but in reality it was the lumber store's own fault, as they had a poor selection of wood, which was not appreciably better than the poor quality lumber sold by Home Depot. Home Depot apparently had had little impact on a store like Southern Lumber which sells much higher quality lumber, at higher prices, with very knowledgeable employees.
A very efficient retail system that delivers a huge array of consumer products at very attractive prices.
A retail sector that pays very low wages/benefits and (frequently) delivers commensurate levels of service.
A health care system that is costly and sometimes cumbersome.
I think Walmart deserves some credit for (1). I find it hard to place the blame for (2) and (3) at the Walmart door.
As the largest retailer in the world, one can make a case that Walmart might have showed more positive leadership. But, be careful what you wish for. Do you really want those public policy issues driven my Walmart corporate interests? I thought not.
In the meantime, consumers still have considerable choice. You can buy a really cheap shirt at Walmart or you can go to Nordstrom and get much better service from an employee who receives much higher wages and benefits. You'll pay a premium and many do just that.
You can go to Costco and buy a much better quality shirt than Walmart, for a comparable price, where the employees receive much higher wages and benefits than Wal-Mart.
"
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" This article even mentions the fact that the $13 Costco shirt is comparable in quality to the Nordstrom shirt at
3x-4x the price.
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That will happen only if/when "somewhere else" places fail to provide a sufficient value proposition to justify their existence. If they're going out of business it's because they're failing to do a good job of serving their markets, not because national chains are being bad. My favorite local coffee place is in no danger of being driven out of business by Starbucks and Peets. That's because it's sufficiently better than they are. Meanwhile several unimaginative "me too" coffee places have gone out of business, as they deserved and should have expected.
I think that's overly simplistic and misleading -- such policies do clearly compensate effectively, at least in part, for less sophisticated pre-sales.
I'd personally rather have such policies than in-my-face sales people, especially those on commission and/or spiffs. I personally tend to know much more about what I want/need than store employees. If I have a question, it's usually something simple like "do you have any back stock of item xxxxx?" than "which item do you recommend?" or "how does this work?"
I think it's patently clear that each business is responsible for its own success or failure, not its competitors. Blaming competitors, no matter how big or how small, is really just making excuses for lack of good business models. The exception is those cases where a competitor is violating laws, in which case proper recourse is through the courts. Just complaining about alleged violations of law doesn't count.
Microsoft succeeded mostly by skill, industry, and foresight. Those competitors that fell by the wayside were largely responsible for their own failings. And there is still clearly intense competition for Microsoft.
Arguing that the world would have been better without Microsoft is actually the harder case to make, given that Microsoft has done so many beneficial things, including the development of a single huge software platform that has resulted in great economies of scale.
That is of course clearly true (absent violations of law) -- some national chains (not all by any means) succeed because they are far more efficient at giving the market what it wants; e.g., convenience and huge selection at low prices.
When national chains don't do that, then they do badly, just like inefficient small competitors. The once might Sears is a case in point. Likewise IBM selling out to Lenovo.
Inflammatory words like "victim" effectively presuppose that some competitors (national chains) are breaking the law, but you haven't made a good case for that. You might as well call any competitor (large as well as small) a "victim" given that *all* companies "suffer" from the forces of competition.
It's true the great majority of the time, as I have shown with numerous examples. Your "current facts" are simply cases where they haven't had enough "unique value" to survive and thrive. It makes no sense to make excuses for them.
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I've asked many employees of these companies about their jobs, and the vast majority are glad to have them. If they had better alternatives, then they would take them. Blaming these big companies for the lack of better alternatives just doesn't make sense.
Most of the criticism of these big companies comes from those with unrealistic utopian visions (and hypocritical conduct). They should be focusing on the kind of social changes needed to uplift workers (e.g., better education and job training) rather than attacking companies for doing their best to be efficient. It's illogical and shortsighted to argue that companies could or would benefit workers by being deliberately inefficient. Were companies to do that, they would lose out to their competitors.
In the long run, the only way our workers are going to be able to maintain a higher standard of living than workers in other countries is to be *more* productive (efficient) than their worker competitors. Sadly, that's a race we've been losing, and the fault is us, not our businesses.
I suspect we're probably pretty far apart on that. ;)
Again, that kind of inflammatory language is neither helpful nor warranted. They clearly do it because it's good for their businesses to do so, not because they are getting "flak".
Makes no difference -- the community still gets the value and the benefit. Many of these companies also make voluntary contributions to local communities, including Walmart -- see (with an open mind) .
In most cases the net effect is nonetheless positive, in part because the store increases efficiency, thereby increasing the purchasing power of local residents. When we spend less on (say) personal care items at Walmart, then we have more money to spend on (say) flowers at the local florist. Another net positive comes from drawing customers from greater distances, which not only increases direct financial benefits, but also benefits local businesses that thereby get more traffic.
In most cases it's not a matter of workers making less because of a Walmart -- most of those workers would have been making even less then Walmart somewhere else, or not even working at all. It simply makes no sense to pay workers your $17/hour when the work can be done with $10/hour workers. To get more money, workers need to be more productive (e.g., skilled), not just hope for wage/employment charity.
Those benefits mostly come from successful businesses, not the ones so inefficient and/or lacking in value that they are driven out of the market by efficient and effective folks like Walmart.
In short, you are effectively trying to blame folks like Walmart for being efficient and successful, which really makes no sense. You should instead be focusing on the kind of social changes that would actually be beneficial. The real root causes of poor wages are things like crappy education and crumbling infrastructure, not efficient and successful competitors.
We have a strong economy and low unemployment of 4.7% , whereas France has a stumbling economy and unemployment of 9.5%, largely because of our more efficient labor and business markets. It clearly would make no sense for us to emulate the labor and business policies of France.
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These things only disappear because they aren't of sufficient value to customers. In effect you are really arguing that we want (value) the wrong things, a social issue, not that these companies are bad for us, a business issue. These business are only giving us what we want. Thus you should be focusing on social issues, not business issues.
Only because that's what we are asking for. Most people actually prefer to patronize (say) a chain burger outlet than a unique local burger stand. The primary reason is that so many unique local burger stands aren't as efficient and as effective at meeting market demands. Better inexpensive good hamburgers most of the time than more expensive wildly erratic hamburgers.
Most local businesses do precious little of that -- the ones that do (around here at least) are the exception, not the rule.
They actually do it voluntarily because it benefits their bottom line.
One vague apocryphal story doesn't a good case make.
That's simply a result of failing to provide a sufficient value proposition. The large chains are simply far more efficient and far more effective at giving the market what it wants. If you're going to blame someone, blame the market (us), because it's our choices that have produced this result. But that's a hard case to make, because most of us clearly do prefer the greater convenience and selection and lower prices of the large chains.
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Good -- that's how the market works -- if enough people agree with you, then Target will outperform Walmart, and Walmart might well then change in response to those market forces. Thus far, however, the market seems to prefer the Walmart business model to the Target business model; i.e., you are in the minority.
Not to mention higher prices. And that's the real problem. It's the fault of the smaller (local) retailers, not the large retailers.
I guess one could make the same claim re: your one-liner rebuttal. I don't know the etymology of the phrase mentioned, nor have I heard it myself prior to the mention here, but I would think, based on my sense of the current state of the retail ecosystem, that there is some truth to it. Perhaps whoever coined it in the first place was thinking primarily of the non-USA-sourced goods that predominate at Walmart, and perhaps also combined with the undisputed fact that most Walmart employees are paid less than their counterparts at other comparable retailers.
Sad but true, as I have said many times before.
Yep, see above. Sigh.
However there's also the question of the usually subtle and always insidious brainwashing that happens on a national scale by the combined media/corporate/government hive-brain via advertising and media programming etc. In other words, in many cases people can be herded into asking for things which are actually counter to their own interests. I will not debate this point further as surely there are always going to be those who reject such things (not to mention going even further off-topic here), but I will just say I am a firm believer in this and leave it at that.
My wager is that such businesses only do these things when they feel it necessary for PR purposes, or when compelled to do so by local municipalities. Whereas, further below I will give a counter-example about the kinds of things that the big-box stores cannot even dream of doing.
Yep. I don't have the document at hand which details exactly how they double-talked and wormed out of many of their "committments" in SF, but HD were clearly sleazy in their dealings here as well. Ultimately they got approval, by the slimmest of margins, to site a store here, mostly by dangling "jobs" at one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. Never mind what will happen to existing jobs within the retail ecosystem that they will draw their customers from, that isn't taken into consideration. Nor is the loss to the community of various less-easily-quantified things that local businesses often provide.
That is certainly also a problem. Of course, huge corporations generally have the resources to make very tempting bribes or pseudo-bribes to local politicians too. In the case of SF, one might say one of the "carrots" dangled in front of the local supe for the poor neighborhood where HD wanted to site a store was a sort of pseudo-bribe, but then again I wouldn't be surprised to find that politician in a lucrative job or consulting gig somewhere down the road that just happened to get a little "help" from a good word from some bigshot at HD.
Here is one article providing a snapshot of what the issues under debate were as of 2002, including some info to back my assertions about the damage to the local economy:
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An article about how Walmart costs taxpayers money:
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How it ended up with HD finally getting approval for a store in SF:
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This article cites a Texas study (no other details) that reportedly shows that locally-owned businesses recycle
45 cents of every dollar back into the community, whereas big-box stores return only 13 cents:
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Another perspective on the quality of merchandise at such stores:
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Now to take a look at the differentiation between local businesses and national/big-box retailers, consider my local hardware store, Cole Hardware on Cole Street in SF. (founded in 1920, they now operate 4 stores in SF -
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For years Cole Hardware had differentiated themselves from alternatives by offering dozens of unique services and showing themselves to be extremely responsive to community needs.
Below are some of the unique services and community tie-ins that CH provides. No one has compelled CH to do these things, they do them partly because it helps create loyal customers and partly because they are just "good to do" and actually benefit them little other than some modest PR benefit perhaps. In some cases it actually costs them a significant amount of money, as in the case of donating 10% of sales to charities.
If you sign up for their "frequent shopper club" (free of charge, minimum $35 annual purchase), you get the following benefits:
- 5% annual purchase rebate at end of year given as store credit
- free "lost key return" service
- Lifetime warranty on most products purchased
- Free delivery within SF on weekends and Friday afternoon/eve
- Monthly newsletter
- Fax documents and ship UPS packages from stores
- Certain special offers
Other services:
- The monthly newsletter not only contains product ads, it also has articles on home improvement, gardening, a question/ answer column, a large list of low-key ads for community businesses, disaster preparation, community calendar, environmental stuff, etc etc. Even a comic strip. :-)
- CH donates 10% of all purchases to local charities, once buyers have designated which organizations they wish the funds to go to. (the list currently includes around 120 schools and 200 other community groups listed)
- Provide free recycling drop-off of batteries, latex paint, scrap copper/brass, fluorescent bulbs and old printer cartridges.
- Provide a "community exchange" to drop off unwanted items to be given to local schools and nonprofits.
- Free balloons for kids
- Carry-out service
- Classes on various things
- In-house charge accounts
- Chaffeur service for seniors
- "Cookie club" - free cookies for kids
- Free delivery for any purchase over $100, frequent shoppers, etc.
- Discounts for disabled/seniors/students
- Special discount on your birthday
- Open 365 days a year
- Laminating machine available for customer use, $1/ea
- Locksmith service
- Price guarantee
- Notary Public at Polk store
- Camera loaned to help customers explain complex problem
- Free re-potting service
- No hassle return-policy
- Special programs for schools/non-profits (discounts/donations)
- Sharpening service
- Tool rental
- Home repair referral service, all contractors/vendors monitored for quality (needless to say they are all local businesses) Services run from appliance repair to data cabling to lead inspection to remodeling, etc.
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