Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Monday, February 18, 2008

Societal Weigh-Off

Well, you've got to give them credit. Actually, they don't need anyone's credit; they've managed, through shrewd enterprise and a sterling sense of business acumen to acquire for themselves huge profits through their vision of providing for their immense customer base quality products at base cost.

Said to be the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart is scorned by those to whom it represents the scourge of the small specialty shop, the corner store, the struggling family business, anxious to retain some vestige of the corner-store, small-business familiarity.

Wal-Mart has managed to shoe-horn itself in to prominence on the marketing scene by sheer dint of determination and smart salesmanship and irresistible marketing techniques. They know what their customer-base wants, and they provide it for them.

They excel at distribution, through the integration of their data systems with those of their suppliers. When they identify what sells, that's what they order from the manufacturers who supply their inventory.

They sell what moves, don't stock huge inventories of items that most people have scant interest in acquiring, and through sheer up-to-the-minute stock-and-sale perfection they're able to coast along with product sales boosting the bottom line even before their supplier-inventories come due.

Brilliant. That's exquisite timing. Resulting in little-to-no costs related to warehousing, comparatively speaking. And that's their technique, leading to their ability to provide desired items at cut-rate prices. The ultimate retail establishment, cutting costs to the bone, and passing along savings to their client base.

But there's more to the Wal-Mart cult of shopping experience than even that. It's undeniable that the company's founder sharp-mindedly thought up an exercise in ultimate marketing, with the intention of growing and becoming wealthy in the process, likely beyond his expectation.

In the process, however, the company has enabled far greater numbers of people to purchase goods because they're more affordable. There was a time when only the wealthy could afford items not considered to be strictly for utility; luxury goods.

Then industrialization spelled the end of artisanship making everything from rude implements to elaborate decorative pieces available to ever greater numbers of people as production and delivery and retailing costs were reduced.

Wal-Mart has taken the process even further. And as the corporation expanded, opening ever more of their warehouse-type goods emporiums greater numbers of people became employed.

They're not an urban shopping phenomena, but rather a rural/suburban one, providing employment, full- and part-time to - honestly - 1.9-million people, many of whom would otherwise be unemployed.

The goods they purvey come from all corners of the world, including corners needing a leg-up and those who're creating their own leg-ups, like India and China. But greater numbers of people continue to be employed in the process of manufacturing also, to produce the goods sold at Wal-Mart.

Although their employees will never be able to join the middle-class through the less-than- munificent salary alone, they do have some security with the corporation providing health care coverage for their U.S. sales contingent.

An amazing $415-million in cash and merchandise is dispensed on an annual basis in a corporate good-will gesture to one hundred thousand charities around the world.

The corporation has committed itself to environmental responsibility, and in a related vein, sells more organic produce than most other retailers. It's working to move prices lower on sustainable technologies and building materials, looking to equip its stores to use 20% less energy for the future.

Low-income families, among them their own employees, are given the opportunity to purchase hard goods and comestibles at 15% to 25% lower costs than at most other retailers.

Its aggressive pricing has encouraged other retailers to compete, among them supermarket chains, helping to keep prices more affordable for families, enabling them to live better, and to save for big-ticket items, like homes, like retirement savings. All right, that's a bit of a stretch.

But all things considered, they're not quite the Bogeyman we love to characterize them as being. Especially snotty people like me and thou.

Furthermore, it appears that they haven't been quite as destructive to the presence of small shop owners as has always been imagined. Their presence in an area isn't entirely inimical to the adaptable small-shop owners who now understand that there are niches to fill in a retail market constantly in flux, responding to the variety of consumer expectations.

So they're all right, on balance. Go ahead, shop there. Count me out. Irrational, I know.

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