Interesting story about the schizophrenic economy this morning out of NBC News -
" Itâs a tale of two consumers this holiday season â and theyâre both at Walmart"
Honestly not anything unexpected as to behavior but I found the comments about Walmart trying to move more âupscaleâ more interesting.
I think anytime a store of any size tries to ârebrandâ itself into something new it is taking a huge risk. For every shopper that you convert from just groceries to also shopping for clothes you probably lose three that have been regulars and no longer shop there for anything.
AND, they went through this before! Short memories have killed/wounded lots of huge businesses.
I always thought Santayana was looking at much longer time frames, but maybe with all the digital overload the attention span of society in general is now down to 5 or 10 years, not decades/centuriesâŚ
Other media, have defined the Walmart recent experience with upscale buyers deciding they had to move down.
My largest discretionary purchase last week was bought on Amazon which was cheaper than Walmart. I have my doubts about whether there is any real increase in upscale buyers at Walmart. Amazon is still highly competitive on name brand items. Amazon did not raise my item from its Black Friday price. I was mildly annoyed by 3 day delivery, but they did tell me upfront.
Did you include the value in the fact you did not need to purchase, maintain, put on body armor to get your item at Walmart when evaluating the purchase price.
If you are on the elderly side or disabled, perhaps including the value of the time it takes to walk from the back of the lot 1/4 of a mile away, because the tweaker trash and thieves have used all the disabled parking.
We also need to include the additional time needed to locate and transport said item to the one or two registers that are staffed, then wait in line for the 3 families with 11 kids each that need to sort their food stamp items from alcohol and tobacco products because 9 different baby daddies decided to hit it and quit it.
Ah. Walmart⌠painting a picture of America in 2025.
Amazon is a LOT cheaper than Walmart when you factor in all the variables like hospital bills for getting shot.
Youâre neglecting that you can get a Walmart plus membership for $50 a year (on sale) that includes home delivery, free shipping on a lot of items, plus either Paramount or Peacock. I am perfectly able bodied by why would i go to the store when it can come to me. I also get Sams Club delivered. I only leave the house for Aldi pretzels.
The handicapped spots are usually occupied with my contemporaries, with their handicapped permits. I am right at home with them.
I am not put off by the food stamp or wic users, they are as civil as everyone else, and as considerate.
If you want to paint a negative picture why donât you add in the people with homemade tattoos, who do not disturb me either.
It is more likely that anyone who attempts to shoot shoppers at our Walmarts, will be shot by some other potential victim.
When you live in an area which has many, many people who are not thriving, you cannot insulate yourself from them without costs to you, your sensitivity and your soul. Part of why many of us who are upscale do not live in such areas. Economic segregation has always been, and will always be part of life in America.
You are obviously missing my hyperbole/sarcasm, but at the same time cannot deny the things that do actually happen around you.
Does not need to be said in that community. Just say they will be âWilliam Chapmannedâ.
My wife is a cancer survivor and sometimes wears a mask in crowded situations or air quality alerts. This could happen anywhere, but last summer I was in a Walmart where the man of a near morbidly obese couple told my wife she should take off her mask, itâs bad for her health. I told him so are Baconators. Some people just cannot mind their own business.
I believe you are referring to an incident in Portsmouth VA, not Portsmouth NH.
We have no Broadcast channel 13, so your image immediately triggered a check.
We do have a homeless encampment in the woods behind the Walmart. Which is why some locked shelves were added, Our people on people violence is where God intended, in the bars.
Ah yes. I failed my google fu. I agree with 95+% of your statement, but still find Walmart to be a magnet for unsavory behavior in every state I have visited one at. I have only witnessed repeated violence shopping at Walmart compared to other stores, despite being in communities that are considered to be of outstanding social character by those that live there.
Once in Lawton, Oklahoma, once in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and lastly and my favorite one at the one outside the gate at Pease ANGB where I got to watch a naked woman run from a cop from the dressing room area all the way to a Texas Roadhouse down the road. It was hilarious and sad at the same time. Fat cop made the show last longer than it should have.
Full disclosure all of those were 5-20 years ago, so I understand those locations/communities have changed, but that is still the core reason why I do not shop at Walmart. I also believe that when you have a high turnover of people your service tends to match, so I prefer to shop at Safeway/Kroger/Costco/Trader Joes/ETC.
Portsmouth has changed a lot from the days when it was a home to many of our service people on active duty. The businesses and the occupations which existed to meet the needs of our service members have changed or ceased to exist. The age of the population has risen and the amount of income and/or wealth to live here has increased.
Many of the low cost retailers in this area have stable work forces, including Walmart. Although I make fewer trips there than in the past, there are still workers I recognize and interact with.
I would not think of visiting a Walmart or other low cost selling venue in many major cities. I even find Costco to be intolerable in urban settings.
We consider Trader Joeâs to be off-limits on weekends. Wonderful workers, but too many customers.
And I limit Aldiâs to one visit every 6 weeks. Too many times the one checkout lane is inadequate, and when it isnât, one may still have to wait for the cashier to stop restocking and handle the checkout.
Retail sucks. Many of todayâs unemployed will not take a retail job. I canât say that I donât understand why. But some people need the money and manage to make the job pleasant for themselves and their customers.
In spite of the first sentence, this article shows some reasonable balance.
It also makes a pretty good case that feelings are not influencing buying behavior, and that when it comes down to deciding what to buy, feelings are being set aside.
I have had what might have been my best holiday selling season in decades. I sell nothing which is giftable. People buy what I sell for themselves. Q4 is usually my worst quarter. Buying starts again after Christmas when some of my buyers spend the gift money or gift cards they received and peaks in March,
The only explanation for my Q4 sales is my buyers have money in their pockets. I know that all of my buyers are not well off, and they buy when they have the money to do so.
Sure there is plenty of gloom. Met one of our friends in the supermarket. She commented that it was surprising to find both my wife and me there. She will not allow her husband to come to the market because he blow up their budget whenever he does.
I assert the core issue is a decline in society in how we treat other people who serve us. I have seen a steep decline in what I would consider a civil attitude/discourse when watching others interact with those tasked to serve them like a waiter or clerk. I have stated it before but we have a clear policy that if someone on their cell phone when making an inquiry, they will be ignored until their conversation is over. We also do not serve people who pull into our parking lot and do not park their car in a parking spot, something we had to deal with on Monday. Gentlemen pulls in throws on the âpark anywhere lightsâ and walks in the door to make an inquiry. The retail manager politely asks the man to park his car and not block the driveway and the guy stomps off with profanities and a comment about customer service. The retort was something along the line of âthe lines are painted out there for a reasonâ. Shame I only got to watch it on camera.
I hope everyone notices that I am not complaining about the employees of Walmart, but the clients who shop there.
Every Trader Joes I have ever been in from NH to CA. Ours here in town is packed Friday to Sunday. Life was hard there in NH when I had to try and make TJ potato gnocchi in my hotel room microwave.at the Marriot near the airfield. On the flip side there was Newickâs on my birthday!!! Woot Woot! I remember bringing several hundred dollars of lobster on the flight home in white foam cases with ice packs inside. The aerial port people were like âwhat kind of cargo is thisâ? They knew damn well we didnât have that in California.
Since the crash with the drunk my wife seldom has the energy to go shopping so she just grimaces when I have to go. She KNOWS that there will be both items and quantities of things that she would never have purchased.
My doctor WILL be reminding me that I was told to wean myself off my potato chip diet planâŚ
Grocery prices (or âfood at home,â as the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls it) rose by 0.7% in December, the largest monthly gain since the peak inflation period in August 2022.
The food price spike signals that âfor many consumers, one of the primary inflation pressure points in recent years is still a challenge,â Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran, wrote on Tuesday. Tariffs are not the lone factor behind food price hikes, Baird says: âA more challenging labor outlook in the U.S. has increased wages for agricultural workers and supply disruptions from disease, weather conditions, and the war in Ukraine have raised food prices globally.â
economists said they expect inflation has peaked and that it will likely throttle back in the second half of 2026. âShort of any new tariffs coming online, we think the direction of inflation is lower,â said Tom Porcelli, chief economist at Wells Fargo.
Some of the biggest price jumps were on items imported from countries saddled with hefty tariffs: Walmartâs store-brand paper folders made in China (up 46%), swai fish fillets from Vietnam (up 34%), Farberwareâs plastic measuring spoons made in China (up 19%) and Schwinnâs infant bike helmet, which used to be made in China but is now made in Vietnam (up 18%).
The one that makes us shake our heads is egg prices. They went up because of the bird flu and are coming down because production is coming back to normal. The rise and fall of eggs had little to do with anyoneâs economic strategy. Yet, they track egg prices as an indicator within inflation.
Very true, and similar environmental/logistical factors (climate issues re Colombian coffee, reduced US labor force re domestic beef) were at play with other item groups.
Plus, thereâs the shrinkflation, which the NPR study accounted for, but not the official indicators related to price changes.
And then again, even with the NPR test, Walmart admitted to more and deeper store discounts in December than usual, which artificially deflates those numbersâespecially if other businesses are unable to absorb those for consumers.
Thereâs a lot of nuance in the data, but the ultimate takeaway for ecommerce retailers is that most consumers are feeling significant enough economic woes in their routine and essentials shopping, that discretionary spending has taken a hit, whether in pausing, slowing, or choosing cheaper non-essential substitutes.
