You know how Catholics believe that in order to get into Heaven you have to do a decent amount of good works, buy indulgences and even then you might spend some significant time in Limbo?Wal-Mart is in a similar situation. In order to get into Chicago they had to agree to do some advertising work on the part of local retailers - the kind that the retailer is driving out of business when they enter a community and offer more goods at a lower price. As this Chicago Tribune story outlines, there are five local stores in the Chicago neighborhood where they've opened their first store that are going to benefit in an advertising way from the company. Wal-Mart will take out newspaper ads on behalf of the stores - largely hardware, auto parts and other such stores - as well as running ads for those stores on the in-store Wal-Mart network TVs. If this effort is successful at wooing over critics it could give the chain a foot in the door (again I revert to the indulgences metaphor) in other cities.
1. I hope they attached the agreement to just the businesses there now, essentially setting it up so they have an incentive to drive the other ones out of business just to save on the advertising expense.
Stupid feel-good arrangement. Guaranteed, the people with less money would like the opportunity to spend it more efficiently at Walmart, and this just helps those with enough money not to care to feel a little better in the meantime.
Either way, the more efficient distribution system will win out, whether it's Walmart, Aldi, Trader Joe's, Home Depot, etc.
It's gotten so good that almost anyone can actually can choose to buy foods based on both quality AND how it's been prepared-- organically, kosher, halal (sp?), etc. Again, I'm sure it's frustrating to people with more money to lose some exclusivity, but it's nice for everyone else.
Posted at 11:13PM on Jan 13th 2007 by Book Fan