Reddit reviews The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and HowIt's Transforming the American Economy
We found 13 Reddit comments about The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and HowIt's Transforming the American Economy. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
More to your point, there's a pretty good book (that's relatively balanced) that I read many moons ago that's worth reading for anyone interested in WalMart's practices:
> The WalMart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and HowIt's Transforming the American Economy
> https://www.amazon.com/Wal-Mart-Effect-Powerful-Works-Transforming/dp/0143038788
The book talks about the things you highlight here. It also looks at how it puts the screws to vendors (basically it opens great opportunities for them to reach much wider audiences, but makes them go to rock bottom pricing, which means they must sacrifice quality... many vendors will create WalMart specific versions of their products that are more cheaply manufactured so that they can meet WalMart's stringent low price demands).
It also looks at the good side of WalMart's practices. Like how they are so maniacal about lowering prices that they've reduced packaging down to the bare minimum, thereby generating less landfill trash, requiring less fuel to transport, etc.
That's not how it works. Wal-mart has huge negotiating leverage with manufacturers, forcing them to cut costs and cut corners when manufacturing their products, which they then sell to all retailers. I highly recommend reading The Wal-Mart Effect.
>You are not ruining the economy by shopping there.
Well, yes, you are. Shopping at Wal-Mart is the same as defecting in the Prisoner's Dilemma problem, except with a gazillion players instead of two. By shopping there, you get some small gain for yourself at the expense of a net larger loss to the world at large (including you). It is pretty classic game theory.
Free markets in general are known to fail at that kind of choice: people tend to pick the path that yields personal short-term gain over collective benefit, even if the choice yields long-term ruin. In the case of environmental destruction, the costs are external to the system as a whole, and there are whole branches of economics discussing how to tweak the market to account for external costs of actions.
In the case of economic plundering (like Walmart engages in) the costs are internal to the eeconomy but are deferred and homogenized so that the cost to each individual isn't directly visible at the time of purchase -- one might call them "artificially externalized" costs.
Edit: I seem to be attracting a fair number of downvotes. I'll charitably assume they're not knee-jerk responses. Here are some some nice references: The Bully of Bentonville; Fishman's nice book on the Wal-Mart Effect; a nice documentary DVD; and Davis's fun pop-level introduction to game theory.
Actually, in some rural areas that is what happens when Walmart moves in. It goes beyond the local economy in that manufacturers are pressured to also follow suit or perish.
Is called the Walmart effect. Here is a good read: https://www.amazon.com/Wal-Mart-Effect-Powerful-Works-Transforming/dp/0143038788
If you dig through a lot of the very specific examples people will cite, I think a lot of it comes down to Walmart representing an unrelenting march of capitalism.
Walmart moves into a town, drives smaller businesses out, and has a tendency to destroy - at least to some degree - local cultures and economies. There's also the Walmart growth plan: they tend to build a cluster of spread-out Walmarts drive out the competition, and then shut those down and build a centralized super-Walmart. The net effect is a lot of job loss, and any jobs gained are predominantly minimum wage.
That's the other problem: Walmart wages. Their employees are paid so low that Walmart is, essentially, using state and federal entitlement programs - your tax dollars - in order to keep their work force so cheap. They have a hugely disproportionate number of their employees on these programs because Walmart doesn't pay a decent wage, frowns on overtime, and is aggressively anti-union, preventing their employees from improving their lot.
...all of this so they can sell you a box of mac and cheese for four cents less than Target or Meijer.
If you want to see more concrete examples, check out the Walmart movie and The Walmart Effect.
The short of it, though: Walmart's about as close to the end-game of capitalism as we have in this country, and it's bad for the economy.
It had a couple of downvotes, no big deal. The comment doesn't even touch on an adequate defense of Walmart though. If you are at all interested, I would suggest this book for a really informative read.
I never shopped at Walmart, until I read this book. One thing it really touches on is Walmart's absolute laser focus on the customer, which, as a customer, is something I can really get behind. It is possible to get really great deals on a variety of items at Walmart. I think it is a pretty wonderful store.
That Walmart is exploitative is arguable. On the one hand, it does pay bad wages, fights unions tooth and nail and doesn't do well in terms of benefits. On the other hand, as I alluded to above, Walmart is entering a voluntary arrangement with consenting adults, paying a legal wage for a legal job. It isn't at all clear to me what people who oppose Walmart want to happen. Force Walmart to pay employees more? This will drive up costs, that will in turn reduce the quality of life for poor people and/or it will cause Walmart to reduce headcount, close stores or use automation instead of workers. This will help some people (probably not current employees if wages are raised by too much as they could be outcompeted by incoming laborers) while hurting a wide variety of others.
Many redditors have a bad habit of reading a news article and believing that they are fully informed on a subject. "Oh, Walmart mistreats employees? I see that headline a lot, Walmart must suck" without ever really deeply considering the problem or getting real information (beyond a pulp news piece).
...you do know that hardware sales in this day and age aren't based on consumer pre-orders, right? Like, not at all?
Microsoft doesn't even get consumer money for these products (unless bought through the MS store). Generally speaking, when you buy a product from a store your money does not go to the manufacturer of said product. The manufacturer was already paid by the store's national branch months or maybe even a year ahead of time. Your money goes to the store's parent company.
And so launch decisions are based on what big box stores think and only trickle-down to what you, the consumer think. Especially so when you consider the fact that a minority of gamers are actually on or using Reddit, Twitter, et all, and so those reviews are... statistically speaking... misleading. Also, big box stores are crap at gathering statistics from social.
Which is not to say consumer reaction can't impact re-up orders (which are also critical), but that's a murky territory done on a case-by-case basis. Suffice it to say, "the internet getting angry" isn't a sure victory.
You should really grab an Econ book and flip to the section marked "big box stores and their impact on sales." Or something to that effect. Edit: Or, if you don't want to read an Econ book or sit in on an investor's meeting where these things get discussed -- and I can't blame you because both are boring as all hell -- there's a book called The Walmart Effect that discusses this phenomenon. Additionally, some news shows like 60 minutes and Frontline have discussed how large chains impact manufacturing and marketing decisions. All of those might be more interesting.
Tl;Dr You're looking at the wrong pre-order numbers.
I read that book. This is it;
https://www.amazon.com/Wal-Mart-Effect-Powerful-Works-Transforming/dp/0143038788/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1483015331&sr=8-2&keywords=walmart+book
Aka the Walmart effect
For some interesting insight on how the process works I recommend reading The Wal-Mart Effect. Fascinating, and disturbing how much influence they have. When you say "large retailers" you may not mean as large as Wal-Mart, but you can still get an introduction to how cut-throat retail can be. https://www.amazon.com/Wal-Mart-Effect-Powerful-Works-Transforming/dp/0143038788
I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet- I'm a little late to the party...
The WalMart Effect
this really sets a lot of things straight about how they operate, eliminate competition, and cheapen the products and material handling for themselves while passing the buck to the manufacturers.
Here, enjoy the reading.
Here's my suggestions:
Hope that helps!