Posted on 03/19/2010 8:16:19 PM PDT by STARWISE
Wal-Mart Stores Inc will cut food prices and mount a new ad campaign over the next six weeks, a threat to other U.S. grocers that sent an industry shares index down more than 2 percent on Friday.
A Morgan Stanley analyst first reported the world's largest retailer's plan, calling it a major setback for other U.S. grocers, and the company confirmed the promotions in an email.
"While this helps address Walmart's traffic woes, we view this as a major setback for the grocery stocks, which have been rallying on hopes of a return to more rational pricing," Morgan Stanley analyst Mark Wiltamuth wrote in a note on Friday.
The Standard & Poor's Food Retail Sub-Industry Index closed down 2.2 percent.
Walmart has used aggressive pricing in grocery and other units to bring shoppers into its stores. The grocery business is particularly pressured by such pricing, as its profit margins are already low.
Investors in Walmart have been concerned about signs that shoppers who gravitated to its stores during the worst of the recession -- boosting sales and profits -- are returning to rivals. Traffic fell in Walmart's U.S. stores during its fourth quarter, despite the holiday season, when shopping is at its peak.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
What the Experts are Saying About Wal-Mart's Economic Impact
Excerpt:
Wal-Mart has lowered retail prices and increased the true disposable income of individuals, then it is likely to have increased personal savings as well.” (The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy, Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Washington D.C., 2006).
Yay .. for at least SOME good news ... PING!
ROFL
I WONDER WHEN THEY WILL BE ACCEPTING THE OBAMA FOOD STAMPS?
http://s881.photobucket.com/albums/ac16/nazibama/?action=view¤t=obama_foodstamp-1.jpg
I don’t know about where you live, but W-M has been raising prices for the last year. Thus lowering them is just getting back to regular prices.
I’m probably not very bright but I like to buy groceries at the place with the lowest prices. It’s just a goofy quirk that I have.
I’d rather starve than give WM one red cent.
Swanson chicken broth:
Wal Mart .40 highest I’ve paid .57
My regular store Bel Air (Raleys- Northern CA) 1.69 on sales1.47
LOL
Wal-Mart is generally lower on canned and boxed foods. For meat and produce they feature mediocre quality and high prices.
They are not even lowest on staple goods sometimes. I eat a couple of snacks at night to settle my stomach. I noticed the local small supermarket is lower on a particular brand of snack cakes than Wal-Mart. On the other hand, for things like rice and beans etc. Wal-Mart is way lower.
Go to pick up the prescription, $4 . . . 4 friggin' dollars. For 60 instead of 30.
Same happened here. They remodled and everything seems like it has increased in price by anywhere from .25¢ through many dollars. Iams cat food used to be $28.66 for a 20# bag now they want $23.99 for 14#! :(
*** W-M has been raising prices for the last year. Thus lowering them is just getting back to regular prices.***
Will the can size drop as the price drops?
Old Roy dog food used to be 50 lb. then dropped to 40 lb, then back up to 50 lb, then down to 40 lb, now it is up to 44 lb.
When was the last time you saw a 20 lb sack of cat food?
Or a POUND OF COFFEE?
Wish I could say it was only Walmart doing this but the other stores are doing it also.
If Aldi ever gets nationwide - Wal Mart grocery will have problems. Wal Mart “ain’t” that cheap. Target is cheaper and Aldi chased WMT out of Germany because ALDI gave em a whopping.
CHINA!
3 lb. bag of onions at Aldi’s $1.99
3 lb. bag of onions at W-Mart $2.88
I don’t know. I find myself coming out of Walmart empty-handed more often than not. I buy some groceries from WM that are consistently cheaper than my grocery store but if you shop the sales you can still beat WM prices.
I noticed this evening, while I was waiting 30 minutes for someone to help me buy a treadmill, that many shelves were empty and there were 6 shelfs that had one row of the same product on each shelf. IOW, they could have fit on two shelves, three deep.
I notice that our over-priced hardware store is packed every day and I know that it is because WM is not carrying the diversity of products it used to. I also notice more traffic at K-Mart, it used to be a mausoleum and now the parking lot is full again.
“Wal-Mart must have forced all domestic food manufacturers to move production to China.”
I love melamine and mercury in my cookies plus sulphur in my dry wall - but that is just me.
Wal-mart is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. They are selling alot of Great Value products made in the USA and people are complaining about not enough name brands on the shelves. It doesn’t seem to matter if the name brands are made anywhere else.
Went to Wal-mart the other day and the lady that checked me out was missing a portion of her left hand, the greeter was very elderly as were many of their employees..where else could they find work? Wal-mart is NON union and of course their prices have gone up as has national wage and gas.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
