I Hate You, Wal-Mart, For What You Have Done to America's Mind

Warning: this content is older than 365 days. It may be out of date and no longer relevant.

In chatting with Marketing Over Coffee co-host John Wall, I reached a conclusion with him: Wal-Mart has unleashed an incredibly destructive force on America, one which is tearing the country to bits.

Lowest price mentality.

In sales, we usually talk about three dimensions of a product:

– Quality
– Service
– Price

Generally speaking, you want a balance among the three. Ideally, you want the finest quality, best service, and lowest price you can get, but you make tradeoffs and concessions in some areas for others.

What Wal-Mart has done is caused a deep imbalance by promoting lowest price as the only factor that matters in a product or service, so much so that people are willing to accept garbage quality and abusive service as long as the price is as low as they can get it.

Is Wal-Mart the cause of this mentality? No, but it’s been the biggest cheerleader with its Always Low Prices campaign.

John and I were discussing airlines. US airline carriers compete virtually solely on price, and that’s resulted in, as John calls it, airlines being transformed from amazing travel experiences to “a Grayhound with wings, complete with smelly seats”.

Here’s a stunning thought for you: what if Wal-Mart were responsible for digital piracy? What if Wal-Mart were the reason that musicians and independent software developers have a harder time than ever earning a living? After all, if lowest price is the absolute most important thing in the world to you, free is even better – even if it means breaking the law and violating intellectual property rights.

A relentless focus on getting things as cheaply as possible means that you as a consumer don’t care about much of anything else. If you’re willing to wear clothing that falls apart in six months, willing to eat unsafe food grown thousands of miles away by the lowest wage workers a supplier can find (legally or not), buy a DVD player that’s held together with duct tape and a prayer, why wouldn’t you download everything you could get your hands on, especially when the likelihood of getting caught is very low?

When do you pay for quality? Or do you mercilessly always choose price as the defining factor in your purchasing decisions? Will you break the law to save money, knowing that most likely, you won’t get caught?

What will you do for low prices?


Comments

16 responses to “I Hate You, Wal-Mart, For What You Have Done to America's Mind”

  1. I won’t say I’ve never downloaded music but I always support the people who are in “our” community. John said it best when he use the term “Wal-Mart Syndrome”. It’s something we have used in our own family business for a few years. In my industry, swimming pools, we are feeling the effects of above ground pools, especially liners, coming from overseas. The popularity of the “blow up” pool that Wal-Mart sell is also a factor. One other important note to make is that they sell the pool but the rest or us, the “real” pool people, are expected to do all the service work for them. When the filter on your pool breaks why not go back to Wal-Mart and have them service it! I could go on but I’d start to go farther off topic so I’ll put an end to it right here.

  2. What’s in that coffee you guys drink? I can’t totally agree. I think it is more based on demand. Why would a 500 phone sell so well when you can get one for30? What would you buy a Mercedes when a Honda will get you from point A to point B just the same?

    I think we buy cheap when we don’t care. When there is no passion behind the product you’re buying then price becomes the overriding factor. Then again, if I can buy a product that I want at 10% less then I will do that. Overpaying is so 1980s.

  3. What’s in that coffee you guys drink? I can’t totally agree. I think it is more based on demand. Why would a 500 phone sell so well when you can get one for30? What would you buy a Mercedes when a Honda will get you from point A to point B just the same?

    I think we buy cheap when we don’t care. When there is no passion behind the product you’re buying then price becomes the overriding factor. Then again, if I can buy a product that I want at 10% less then I will do that. Overpaying is so 1980s.

  4. Interesting concept, but I think you’re stretching it a little too far. To Bills point, the iPod is by far the best selling digital music player on the market, yet it’s is not the least expensive. I also don’t eat the $1 value menu every day at McDonalds because it’s the cheapest food I can get.
    I agree somewhat with Mike; people will spend based on their perceived value of a product. Flying used to have a high perceived value, but with all the cost cutting it’s gone. So to your point, does aggressive price cutting diminish perceived value? Probably, yes. But the music industry have done themselves no favor by aggressively treating their own customers so badly lately. If you make me hate you, I don’t feel much like paying you anything more than I have to. On the other hand, Apple has engendered so much good will among it’s customers, they can charge almost whatever they want and people are happy to pay it.

  5. Interesting concept, but I think you’re stretching it a little too far. To Bills point, the iPod is by far the best selling digital music player on the market, yet it’s is not the least expensive. I also don’t eat the $1 value menu every day at McDonalds because it’s the cheapest food I can get.
    I agree somewhat with Mike; people will spend based on their perceived value of a product. Flying used to have a high perceived value, but with all the cost cutting it’s gone. So to your point, does aggressive price cutting diminish perceived value? Probably, yes. But the music industry have done themselves no favor by aggressively treating their own customers so badly lately. If you make me hate you, I don’t feel much like paying you anything more than I have to. On the other hand, Apple has engendered so much good will among it’s customers, they can charge almost whatever they want and people are happy to pay it.

  6. I think Sam Walton would be ashamed of where his company has taken itself. Surely I’m not the only one that remembers Wal-Mart’s “Made In America” campaign from years back?

    Sometime between then and now the company turned into the 1000-pound gorilla it is by figuring out it can squeeze its vendors’ prices to the rails, sell at 1% profit margin (or less), and make a mint by selling a simply mind-blowing volume of product.

    The value and perception of quality raises proportional to the person’s income, which means Wal-Mart’s hack and slash price mechanics will always have a place with those less fortunate or of less means than others.

    I think you’re making quite a leap from “low prices” to “steal this”. Wal-Mart is responsible for a lot of bad things (including a lot of bad things in the music industry), but I can’t make the connection that they actually encourage piracy — at least not with a straight face.

    At some point, personal responsibility has to step up and be counted — you’re going to steal someone’s work because of your choices in life, not because something Wal-Mart does.

  7. I think Sam Walton would be ashamed of where his company has taken itself. Surely I’m not the only one that remembers Wal-Mart’s “Made In America” campaign from years back?

    Sometime between then and now the company turned into the 1000-pound gorilla it is by figuring out it can squeeze its vendors’ prices to the rails, sell at 1% profit margin (or less), and make a mint by selling a simply mind-blowing volume of product.

    The value and perception of quality raises proportional to the person’s income, which means Wal-Mart’s hack and slash price mechanics will always have a place with those less fortunate or of less means than others.

    I think you’re making quite a leap from “low prices” to “steal this”. Wal-Mart is responsible for a lot of bad things (including a lot of bad things in the music industry), but I can’t make the connection that they actually encourage piracy — at least not with a straight face.

    At some point, personal responsibility has to step up and be counted — you’re going to steal someone’s work because of your choices in life, not because something Wal-Mart does.

  8. Bryce: absolutely. The connection for piracy was intentionally a little sensationalistic – but when you consider it, if you’ll feed your body – for which there is no warranty and you only get one per lifetime – garbage just to save 50 cents, it’s not a huge stretch to say that mindset can taint everything else.

  9. I won’t say I’ve never downloaded music but I always support the people who are in “our” community. John said it best when he use the term “Wal-Mart Syndrome”. It’s something we have used in our own family business for a few years. In my industry, swimming pools, we are feeling the effects of above ground pools, especially liners, coming from overseas. The popularity of the “blow up” pool that Wal-Mart sell is also a factor. One other important note to make is that they sell the pool but the rest or us, the “real” pool people, are expected to do all the service work for them. When the filter on your pool breaks why not go back to Wal-Mart and have them service it! I could go on but I’d start to go farther off topic so I’ll put an end to it right here.

  10. You are correct Chris. I absolutely HATE shopping at Wal-Mart and I’m perfectly happy to pay more for a product if I can get great service from the employees. If you want to see a great example of this go to Whole Food Market. They offer a high quality niche product, excellent service and they charge a premium for it. People generally only complain about price in the absence of value but there seems to be a nationwide trend in the level of poor service and terrible quality people will accept because it’s cheap.

  11. You are correct Chris. I absolutely HATE shopping at Wal-Mart and I’m perfectly happy to pay more for a product if I can get great service from the employees. If you want to see a great example of this go to Whole Food Market. They offer a high quality niche product, excellent service and they charge a premium for it. People generally only complain about price in the absence of value but there seems to be a nationwide trend in the level of poor service and terrible quality people will accept because it’s cheap.

  12. What is this discussion saying about Bloggers/Podcasters? Are we more inclined to demand better service and quality and not be Wal-Marts customers. Statistically if you look at even the relatively small number of commenter’s to this post thus far if it was a good mix in demographics there should be at least one person that likes to shop at Wal-Mart. After all they have to have a lot of customers. Also when is the last time you went through a drive-tru and actually got what you ordered? I think at this point we are just used to everyone screwing up. There isn’t a morning in recent memory that my morning coffee order has been right. My dad flips when this happens and most people now just accept that thats the way it is and deal with it.

  13. What is this discussion saying about Bloggers/Podcasters? Are we more inclined to demand better service and quality and not be Wal-Marts customers. Statistically if you look at even the relatively small number of commenter’s to this post thus far if it was a good mix in demographics there should be at least one person that likes to shop at Wal-Mart. After all they have to have a lot of customers. Also when is the last time you went through a drive-tru and actually got what you ordered? I think at this point we are just used to everyone screwing up. There isn’t a morning in recent memory that my morning coffee order has been right. My dad flips when this happens and most people now just accept that thats the way it is and deal with it.

  14. Bryce: absolutely. The connection for piracy was intentionally a little sensationalistic – but when you consider it, if you’ll feed your body – for which there is no warranty and you only get one per lifetime – garbage just to save 50 cents, it’s not a huge stretch to say that mindset can taint everything else.

  15.  Avatar
    Anonymous

    I only goto matinees, as the movie is the same, no matter what price you pay.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Pin It on Pinterest

Shares
Share This