For all you Walmart haters out there...

Check it out.  Their lower prices help poor and middle class urban types like me afford healthy food.  People like me who lived in an urban area that had nothing but Whole Foods, posh personal shopping services, fancy caterers and 7-11s understood this, but now there is a published study on it.

See for yourself. 

While I have no intention of entering into the fray, (anything I could add has been said before), I would like to point out that not everyone can afford the luxury of righteous indignation.  To my mind, that is the more important underlying issue.  

If Wal Mart is what you can afford, it's what you can afford. The individual consumer has to make that decision.

That said, I don't shop there on principal, but I have a lot of other choices. Many of the working poor don't.

betty, have you never lived in a town without a walmart?  seriously.  i grew up in a small town with a tourism base: seasonal, low-paying jobs, and nowhere near enough population to support a big chain like walmart.  and guess what?  we had locally-owned grocery stores, clothing stores, a pharmacy, appliance retailers, home improvement materials, etc.  we had everything we needed, and of better quality that we could get by driving 112kms to the walmart.

you make it sound like the whole world lived in abject poverty before walmart came along.  not so.

i mean, what split said. :)

fair enough, 'gator and split, but what do you think of the claim that walmart is making it's customers healthier?

i'm trying to get the study; just waiting for the site to email my user id and password (i suspect they'll then ask me to pay for the document, which i won't do).  but the fact that on the page betty posted, there were no less than 5 studies on walmart by the same two authors kind-of answers my question about who's funding the research.

#23

I HAVE lived in placed without Walmart and without a car for a time. Now, I live in a place with lots and lots and lots of stores and competition and I will never live in a no-Walmart town again.

Ever.

edited to play nice

wow.  i'd trade the one-walmart town i live in now for my old no-walmart town in a second.  i miss things like service, quality, and co-operation.

So, we don't have a Wal-Mart... I don't think I've even been in one.  So I have no idea how much cheaper it actually is.

What % cheaper is it for identical items?  Or is the discount primarily from inferior goods?

#25

oh please.

People typically focus on one topic for their PhD and then continue in that vein as their career.  It makes sense that they have published mulitple studies on Walmart.  That is also the fastest way to continue research, write a new article, publish and achieve tenure.

The fact that they have multiple published studies does not prove your point.

And by the way, in the glorious, romaticized past only certain people received quality, co-operation and service.

to download from ssrn is generally free, unless the paper is already published in a journal. I would have thought you would have come across the site before in all your academic research pgeorgian.

Anyway these guys are going to love it if you all download thier papers. There is a kind of ranking and the more downloads a paper gets the happier each author is. Since all thier other papers have limited numbers of downloads it suggests that thier reputation is yet to be established.

I might have a look at it tomorrow. I'm in Germany, Walmart withdrew from the market here because it WASN"T CHEAP ENOUGH. I didn't shop there because I had at least 4 other chepaer options.

All I can say is that I am happy I live in a community that is large enough to support Wal-mart and my locally owned grocery store as well as the specialty meat shoppes and delis etc.

I shop my local store almost exclusively (except for maybe a trip to A&P once in a while) and augment my produce with my local farmer's market.

Because I have lots and lots of stores and competition - I can choose not to shop at Wal-mart - so I don't.  Ever.

But PG - if you get the study - please update us.  :)

Thanks.

just out of curiosity PG, how were the prices for all those items mentioned in #23 in comparison to the big box stores?

I downloaded it for free.  You don't have to email it to yourself.  you can just download it straight from the sight.  jane, I think that is soooo funny!  One of my friends told me about the Germany Walmarts.  It's the same in Mexico.  They're not the cheapest there.

Original Post by bettypage4:

And by the way, in the glorious, romaticized past only certain people received quality, co-operation and service.

the glorious, romanticized past?  please.  i was there ten days ago.

You're missing the point, BettyPage. The point is that Wal-Mart has all these horrible ways that it brings the "healthier" food to you.

Sadly, it's not even that much cheaper, AND it's the inferior goods from the manufacturer.

hg, I am not missing the point at all.  I understand English.  I know what you are saying.

Does every meal have to be perfect?

Original Post by jules817:

just out of curiosity PG, how were the prices for all those items mentioned in #23 in comparison to the big box stores?

some things were cheaper; most were not.  most of the big box stores function by offering loss-leaders.  also, local retailers are often open to negotiate.  go to them with a quote from a larger retailer, and they'll find a way to meet it.  for instance, i had friends who were building a house.  they went to a small, local retailer, pre-ordered all of their appliances (important, because small businesses don't often have a lot of storage space), and got a better deal than they would have by driving to a major retailer.

i did the same with a pair of hiking boots: went in to my local shoestore, said i could get them for $XXX, but that i'd rather buy from them.  they gave me the price.

mostly, though, it's an ethical thing: if i want the small, personal businesses to be there, i have to support them.

Original Post by hgielrehtaeh:

Sadly, it's not even that much cheaper, AND it's the inferior goods from the manufacturer.

 Yep.  And you wanna know why they send their inferior goods to WalMart?  Because they are forced to lower their prices below what they sell to most other stores, because if they don't, WalMart won't carry their products at all.  So of course they are going to give their crappier goods to the store that forces them to take a rock-bottom margin of profit.

No -- every meal doesn't have to be perfect, but every thing I buy must be a deliberate decision.

 

Your argument is analagous to this:

Paper manufacturers are tearing down thousands of acres of rainforest, displacing native peoples, ruining local ecosystems, and causing great harm to our planet.

Yeah, well it's okay because I got that paper for $1 and my son was able to write an A+ paper on it.

i can't get the paper.  maybe it's not available for free download in canada.

incidentally, jane, i've never heard of ssrn, and you're right, social science research is what i do.  just glancing around, it has a very corporate look to it.