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“..no, it’s due to Walmart having better prices!”

I wrote most of my MBA papers on Walmart as they publish an astonishing amount of data. But several times I studied and contrasted Walmart and Target. At the time, 2009, the average patron of Walmart made $25,000. At the same time the average patron of Target made $75,000. Target made a concerted effort to have higher value items and a wider variety of those items than Walmart. Where they did have the same items, say Crest toothpaste, Walmart kept their prices roughly ten percent below any store within a certain distance of each Walmart. Walmart did regular surveys of competitors to ensure the lower prices but done on a store-by-store basis and only those who were close by competitors. But overall, Target had a more “artistic” and higher quality selection of home items like art, furniture and sports equipment.

I interviewed patrons of both Walmart and Target. The average Target patron was upper middle class and judging by bumper stickers, very left leaning liberal. I’d roll through the parking lot and usually counted ten or so COEXIST bumper stickers. When they went DEI, they probably thought they were parroting the views of their average patron. But those same people didn’t want a trans woman in the bathroom with their daughter. Trans was never widely adopted by the rank-and-file Democrats, just the crazy loud ones.