Well, I can report the “replace” is not happening here in Colubmia, MO WalMarts. The WalMart “Great Value” brands are ALTERNATIVES placed on the shelf next to the standard “brand name” food products.
Note what the original article said and what the additional article that I've posted said (from the Advertising magazine) and also, what I've said.
It's that Walmart is doing this with certain selected name-brand items. And I've already run into it. In addition, another FReeper reported on this thread that also Walmart discontinues some of these name-brand products for a few months and bargains with suppliers and then it shows back up on the shelf again.
All this means that customers who were spending money there for these products are forced to go to other stores and this hurts Walmart. It doesn't hurt the customers themselves, as they are exposed to other stores with a wide variety of products in them, and they (many times) find other things that they like. So, in that respect, forcing those customers out of Walmart for those particular discontinued items, has been a benefit to the customers.
So, who it is not a benefit to... is Walmart itself... and that's the problem (for Walmart, itself, of course.).
In addition, with the news reports about this, it's also clear that Walmart is doing this as a chain, for all stores, and it's not just on the basis of one particular store and one particular manager of a store, doing this just for his store.
And, once again, so to make it clear (and this is the one thing that many posters seem to be confused about) -- it's that Walmart is not replacing "all" name-brand label items, they've selected a certain portion and a certain number to do this for. That seems to be one confusing point to some posters here.
Another confusing point to some posters is that they think this is a discussion about whether Walmart "should have" any "off-label" items on their shelves. And once again, that's not the issue here, because all stores have those.