Frontline: "Is Wal-Mart Good For America?"

[flvegan]

Should be good. Hope this isn't a dupe...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/

[Surikat]

1. It is...

[el_gato]

8. It is helping destroy America

[tridim]

2. It was on last night here

Twas a very interesting show. To answer the question, no, Wal-Mart is only good for China.

They should be broken up, but of course it'll never happen because they're a fascist model of excellence.

[cattleman22]

16. Broken up in which way?

Do you think Walmart should be broken into regional companies like AT&T was? Or do you think they should be less vertically integrated and broken up that way?

[AFSCME girl]

3. Hi flvegan..

Was on here in Michigan last night and it was an excellent show! Very interesting and informative. :hi:

[tech3149]

4. It was on here last night

and it was good. I can accept some of Wal Mart concepts as positive, but I can't support their strong arming of suppliers and employees.

[ydya]

5. Is wal-mart good for America? Well,

Is a tumor that sucks out life from essential organ systems, and kills them one by one to feed its own rampant useless malignancy, good for your health?

[madrchsod]

6. a&p contolled the grocery market in the 20`s and 30`s

but as with any business walmart will slowly lose market share. to see how well walmart is doing check the sales of the older stores in various markets during the good times and bad. also check the rise of the "dollar stores"

[musette_sf]

7. Watched it last night

and it made me wonder... if you asked a Wal-Mart shopper, "would you pay a penny more for a product, if it meant that some US jobs might be saved?", I'll bet there would be very few who would say No. Yet these cheap fucks at Wally World keep looking for another penny to shave off, regardless of the "trickle-down" effect. I thought the Wally Worlders came off as cult-like, strange, cold and evil. Not to mention un-American.

And did you see those OFFICES! Yikes! Made the offices at Wernham Hogg look downright posh!

[Tweed]

13. Yes! Another fan of the Office!

Best show in a long time. Too bad it had to end after two seasons.

[warrens]

17. I haven't seen the show yet

But I do know that WM is the master of selling you something that LOOKS like the real thing, but isn't. For instance, its meat is "general" rather than "choice." You get what you pay for with those guys. They routinely engineer products down, so that the shirt you get there has fewer stitches, the plastic products are made with less plastic, etc. etc.

[Surikat]

9. Big box stores like Wal-Mart and Costco...

...are currently very competitive for the consumer dollar. They're competitive because they are able to work with producers to reduce costs in ways that fragmented, specialty stores are not.

Big boxes are not a new business model. They current fill the same economic niche that outfits like Sears-Roebuck and Spiegels did half a century ago. The anger that small businesses feel for big box stores is nothing compared to the loathing that small businesses felt for outfits like Sears-Roebuck when they leveraged the railroad shipping capability and the post office in the late 19th century to revolutionize consumer access to inexpensive, well-made merchandise via catalog sales.

I tend to use Costco, for example, because among other things they market under their Kirkland label what is, as best as I can see, is the cleanest and least likely to spoil milk I can buy anywhere.

Recently, however, I've seen my purchases at Costco drop by about 75-80% simply because they have no product loyalty. They will stock something that I like for a while and then after a few months I will no longer be able to get either that item or a reasonable alternative. Wal-Mart is a bit smarter about developing long-term supplier relationships than Costco is, however.

The point to all this is that big box stores are currently economically viable. Smaller stores keeping older paradigms of marketing aren't.

I frankly don't see big boxes keeping their market share for too many more years, however. The paradigm I see succeeding them can be found in Amazon's used book service. The ability to access virtually any book shop's inventory via the Amazon search engine has turned what was a marginal industry (used bookshops) into a vibrant, exciting business these days. Mind, the shops' walk-in custom is very small, but the amount of inventory they ship via UPS and the Postal Service is huge.

Small businesses that are smart enough to specialize and really get to know their product lines that adopt that world-market sales paradigm by partnering with an internet consumer search service like Amazon has will do well. The others will be dead meat.

A free market is like that. Trying to stop that sort of shakeout is simply taxing consumers indirectly with higher prices to preserve outmoded business models. Mind, there is a lot of that trying to happen.

[UdoKier]

10. I was a great program.

And a painful reminder of the dark side of Bill Clinton's policies.

[natrat]

11. WALLMART IS FOR LOOSERS TELL A FRIEND

[natrat]

12. Costco is ethical Walmart is scum -tel a friend

[ThoughtCriminal]

14. When the aliens land

and ask me to take them to our leader, I think I'll take them to Walmart instead of the White House. Maybe instead of disintigrating us for our own good, they will settle on a good deal on disposable diapers.

[mrbassman03]

15. Anyone see the Wal-Mart South Park?

Hilarious...