http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

With the earlier posts about price, I found this article to be extremely interesting. Places like Walmart tend to sell the consumer on price over quality.
My wife and I debate this often. I despise Walmart and figure Sam Walton rolls over in his grave often after seeing what his descendants are doing to his company. The customer service sucks, yet I heard on the radio earlier today that 84%, that's 84%, of Americans shop there. I want quality service, my wife will sacrifice quality service for price. When she shops for groceries and I'm with her, she always tells me to "put the bread and eggs on the belt last or else they will crush them". I respond with doesn't it make sense to shop at Food Lion where they have trained people who know how to bag groceries?
So, while we debate the merits of quality service, places like Walmart convince the consumer, i.e. OUR CLIENTS, that price is more important than quality!
I know, we can overcome this perception, but I think as time goes on, we are all gonna have to learn to deal with the high end client trained by Walmart to be a bargain shopper!

Hello Kevin, the page comes up and says its moved. But i will go to wally world as a last resort. My wife shops there too, however she does by her grocerys at Food Lion.

My wife and I no longer shop there. Customer service or better to say "customer no service" is really a huge turn off.

The jist of the article was that Walmart forces jobs overseas by pressuring its suppliers to provide their products at a cheaper price. They were using Vlasic pickles as an example...Vlasic spent years stressing quality over price only to have Walmart come in and pressure them so they (Walmart) could sell 5 gallon jars for $2.97.
I guess they have pressured the website, too!
Watch out, Rick! They will be telling you to remove my post!

Kevin your link was broken, I fixed it.

That is an INTERESTING article.

The old axiom holds true... Live by price, die by price!

My wife and I boycotted Wal-Mart many years ago.

Several years ago my wife and I were standing at a Wal-Mart checkout. There was a tall stack of bleach in boxes that hand been foolishly placed in a congested traffic area. Someone backed up in the checkout aisle and the boxes of bleach tipped over. Bleach shot up my wife’s legs and soaked her jeans and shoes. We brought the matter to Wal-Mart's manager and asked for a refund for her damaged clothing. We had to FIGHT with them for weeks to get reimbursed.

Aside from the bleach experience; I don't like Wal-Mart's approach to business. I don't like their business tactics, I don't like their marketing, I don't like their unfair employee programs, I don't like their wage structure, I don't like their riff-raff. And I especially don't like what they're doing to this country. Therefore we’ve made it our goal to NEVER do business with Wal-Mart.

BIG retail giants like Wal-Mart and Home Depot are killing the mom and pop enterprises that embody free enterprise, which has always been the benchmark of the American economy. Home Depot just bought Chem-Dry - need I say more. Unfortunately their quest to monopolize their industries, at times forces each of us to do business with these giants. However I always support the family owned hardware store in my town whenever I can. And we avoid Wal-Mart like the plague that it is.

Rick I agree with you 100%. And those are the reasons why I think we all have an upper hand by being a service oriented industry. There is no way Home Depot can out service a well run mom a pop service company. Yes they can sell 2x4's cheaper, but they can not guarantee cleaner carpet. That is why I like dealing with family businesses for my cleaning supplies. The customer service you recieve from companies like Excellent Supply and Greenglides is far better than even Bridgepoint or other large retailers.