Aphie, that is a thought provoking article. I can see that in a lot of areas Walmart is putting the other guys out of business. We have 2 within 5 minutes of my boat. They are both always just jammed. I go there about 2 times a year. They carry a couple of things no one else does, but their merchandise is cheap and shoddy. They are going to be the victim of their own cheapness if they do not watch out and go the way of the other "bargain" stores.......do you remember Korvette's and Kresge and Woolworth??
I worked at a disc drive manufacturer for awhile. IBM was a big customer, they sent in teams to negotiate the quality higher and they sent in other teams to negotiate the price lower. The owner of the disc drive place eventually wished he had never heard of IBM. At one point we had a rework line just for IBM and some days we were shipping drives that worked to IBM and all the rest of the stuff got shipped to Tandy, etc. Big customers can negotiate just about anything with a subcontractor, you have to watch out. You can get car tires from a discount house that have the same name and very nearly the same part number as the tire you want but it will be a negotiated knock off, made by the same manufacturer that you wanted the item from in the first place. It foils all your research, you think you are getting a great tire because all your research pointed you to that item, then you shopped for price and bought a piece of shit. I had four blowout in a year before I was savvy enough to know the difference. If nobody can compete with Wal Mart in the cheapness and low quality arena then all you have to do is stay away from the place and you have a reasonable chance of getting good quality.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa:eek: Its not fair!! :eek: Walmart made us go out of business!:eek: I love this, " Vlasic filed for bankruptcy--although the gallon jar of pickles, everyone agrees, wasn't a critical factor." If it wasn't a critical factor, then why write about it to make it seem like it was such a huge deal. Fact is most large companies with production in the US have serious cost problems inherent in their corporate structure. These companies are not flexible enough to handle competition and find anything to blame for their inepitude. Given that the manufacturing sector has been the battleground in the past decade, soon enough Adam Smith's invisible hand will sweep across the service sector.