Amazon, Walmart, and Target finally realize their colossal pricing mistake—now they’re slashing costs to win back customers
Amazon, Walmart, and Target finally realize their colossal pricing mistake—now they’re slashing costs to win back customers
Amazon Fresh just became the latest big-box retailer to cut costs on thousands of items, following in the footsteps of Walmart and Target in reversing course on years of inflation-induced price hikes
Greed-induced. Inflation-excused.
Corporations are always greedy, so this factor never changed. It could not have been the cause of inflation, since we had greedy corporations and more inflation before.
I want to point out that your reasoning is irrational which makes your conclusion nonsense.
You didn't root cause or analyze anything, then declared yourself to be right "because".
Here I'll show you, let me use your method to "prove" something.
"The Potato Party has always been in charge in Tombo County, the hungry kids in schools are not the fault of The Potato Party because kids here have been hungry before."
We can "prove" so many things this way!
The greed is constant, but the opportunities to excuse price increases are not. Egg prices jumped up about 6x because they had the excuse of bird flu, but the prices magically went down (but stayed elevated) after the government threatened an investigation. As ineffectual as our government has been made, increasing prices out of nowhere with no plausible excuses will invite an investigation.
Corporations all raised prices at the same time. No competition to offset the greed. Normally that level of coordination is impossible among different companies, at least some would keep prices lower to retain customers.
About two years too late for me to accept apologies on post pandemic price gouging, already cancelled prime and use local groceries over corpo stores. In general they have better quality of selection and prices most of the time, plus it encourages me to explore more variety of small groceries from other cultures, farmers markets, etc.
Similar with fast food if you want to charge me 16 bucks for a meal I'm going to an actual restaurant instead
look at this fucker, with his local grocery stores. They're all but extinct out here on the prairies
Yeah definitely a privilege of living in a pretty densely populated area with lots of options and even here some have closed, including some of the larger populations of Asian and middle eastern immigrants in the area running many of the smaller shops.
The chain stores are more than the co-op stores in my area too. And with summer coming farmers markets are definitely a better value AND quality option, too
If you think this was "inflation", I've got a bridge to sell you.
And the price of that bridge has doubled. :-)
Due to impacts of COVID 19 on the supply chain, the bridge price has doubled again, and lead time is now 18 years.
If you have questions about your purchase, you can call our support line, but please know were experiencing longer than usual wait times due to the pandemic - we anticipate your current wait time at the heat death of the universe.
Big-box stores lowering prices wasn’t an altruistic move to throw customers a bone during tough times. Retailers have suffered from weak sales due to customers’ struggle with high prices. Target reported a 3.1% drop in net sales from a year ago and a 3.7% quarterly dip in comparable sales, marking its fourth consecutive quarter of declines. Though Walmart has continued to soar, it owes much of its 6% revenue growth to its e-commerce successes and wealthy customer base, the latter of which makes up a growing chunk of its audience.
This trend has continued in fast food, with McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King all announcing meal deals following earnings reports that suggest customers are losing their taste for high-priced fast food, including $18 Big Mac meals and threats of surge pricing.
No one could have anticipated this outcome
Due to this fuckery, my family will literally never by fast food again unless we are traveling.
Cross-country road trips now have the sandwich fixings stored in a cooler in the car. Pre-make the next day's sandwich the night before and toss it in the cooler.
Honestly it's much nicer sitting at a picnic table at a rest area, which generally has nice views, than going into a restaurant or eating drive-thru in the car.
At least the pandemic had some silver linings, would not have necessarily thought to do this otherwise.
You have to be wealthy to shop at Walmart now. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Though Walmart has continued to soar, it owes much of its 6% revenue growth to its e-commerce successes and wealthy customer base, the latter of which makes up a growing chunk of its audience.
wtf
You know shit is bad when you need to be making $80,000 a year to afford to shop at Walmart.
Whale economy as seen in f2p games.
Starve the community around you with higher prices, make all your money with the few who buy bottled mineral water for car wash.
Nah. I’ve already gotten used to not buying random crap anymore. I’d rather have the cash.
These are stores which also sell necessities, not just random crap. Based on the article, it sounds like mostly food is having its prices scaled back.
And they rely on selling both to be profitable. But now their customers are used to not buying the latter (random crap) so that they can afford the former. And the retailers are realizing they may not begin buying random crap again even when prices decrease, because life without the random crap isn't much different.
"I promise I'm not gonna hit you baby if you come back, honest i won't. You know i just get excited because i love you too much..."
I hear those big box stores will shut down immediately if someone, anyone, just scatters union pamphlets around the store.
Exactly. Local Walmart (Pico Rivera, ca) shut down for "plumbing" issues for 8 months when union activity started. The building was less than 10 years old
Isn’t price gouging illegal? 🧐
So is price fixing.
...i quit shopping brick-and-mortar after target routinely charged more in their stores than online + shipping...
They've even started getting worse with their apps. I got a notification recently that one of the apps (target) will have fluctuating prices. My understanding is it's demand based increases. While walking around the store one time I looked at items in the app and most of them were higher than on the shelves.
They've spent years pushing people to get comfortable with app shopping and easy pickup... Now they're going to squeeze every penny out of that crowd that they can.
I walked into a Whole Foods for the first time a little while back for an Amazon return, I saw the $9 gallon of milk and walked right out.
Hopefully the price slashing is significant.
Anyone noticed a pricing difference with "local" grocers? Obviously there aren't many left and at least in my area they rely on a regional distributor that's pretty consolidated. Just curious if they've been treating consumers any better.
The spouse does most of the shopping but I was in a Harps the other day and saw that a medium (shrinkflated) bag of Cheetos was $8.75 USD.
Harps isn't super local but... Holy shit. Who can afford Cheetos at that price? I used to buy them as an occasional treat but fuck that noise.
EDIT: for fun I just searched Walmart and they're $5.94 there. I'm still not spending that much for a garbage treat.
Don't worry. They'll be "marked down" to regular price (still overpriced) on the sell-by date so people think they're getting a deal.
The local grocers that I shop at are all Asian, but aside from the big Japanese one, they are all far cheaper than the big stores, especially when it comes to meat and produce.
I got a 6-pack of a Korean drink I enjoy called Milkis in an Asian grocery for about the same price as a 6-pack of Coke at a Kroger.
The imported Korean drink and the American drink are the same price except one's in a local store.
Walmart is still cheaper then local basic stores like Price Chopper and Hy Vee
Not local, but I’ve been shopping at Lidl and Aldi for years and while their prices raised some with inflation, it was negligible compared to bigger grocery stores. I pay less than half at Lidl than I would at another store.
I’ve been seeing the horror stories of $9 milk for years but I’ve never paid more than $2-3 for. Gallon of milk.
the only one within an hour of here has very high prices. they basically feed off of walmart hate, and charge those customers a premium for the convenience of not having to drive an hour (each way) to get to the next nearest store that isn't them or walmart.
Hope Loblaws here in Canada follows suit
Just don't shop there
Can't drive due to tourette's, only spot within walking distance
I hope they get nationalized.
It's basic economics. As prices rise sales drop, you just need to adjust to find the point of maximum profit. Since market information isn't perfectly known you'll occasionally see overshoots like this.
ya. basically they hit that 'tipping point' where the increased profit margins from the higher prices is no longer keeping up with the decrease in sales volume resulting from those ever-increasing prices.
Yes, but once you progress beyond demand elasticity and possibility frontiers, you learn about how externalities and marketing distort the tidy micro/macroeconomic theories.
“Perfect information” and “rational self interest” are the two biggest inbuilt crutches to economic theory, and capitalism evolves its profit-taking modalities daily. If marketing can convince consumers that an objectively inferior brand is equal or better to the competition, then the price inelasticity raises dramatically
Funnily enough I haven't really used a big retailer in ages. I might hit Walmart on very niche items, though only if I'm not aware of a local alternative. Same for Amazon: Go on there, look for stuff, check who makes a thing, go to that website or spend a minute and scroll through Etsy. Amazon: The worldwide product distributor info marketplace.
Aldi for life.
“Mistake” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
More of a "well we got what we could get while we could get it"
And now they expect us to go into a spending spree with these "new amazing low prices".