Wal-Mart has vowed to be the "price leader" this holiday season, and announced plans on October 21 to cut prices every week until Christmas to fend off rivals and win over shoppers.Somehow, I don't think Wal-Mart is too particularly worried about not selling enough toys this year. What they are trying to do is smash the crap out of every other toy retailer in America and be the last one standing.After it reduced toy prices at the end of September, Target Corp responded with price cuts of as much as 50 percent on toys like Barbie and G.I. Joe.
Analysts said many of these holiday price cuts are planned in advanced, allowing retailers to protect their margins.
But such cuts can be damaging to manufacturers, because they train shoppers to expect lower prices for their goods. They can also hurt retailers' profits if they must slash prices lower than expected to match competitors' prices, or they can not sell enough goods to offset the lower prices.
They're betting big time that they will be. And frankly, I wondered why they didn't do this last year. Such aggressive price cuts will only hurt those retailers who can't keep up with Wal-Mart. Don't think this will be limited to just toys, either. Wal-Mart has also declared an all-out price war in books and in electronics and computers too. Whether it's coffee urns or coffins and urns, Wal-Mart's going for the whole enchilada.
When the smoke clears from this, there's not going to be a whole lot of other survivors.
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I hate Walmart. My husband and I quit shopping there more than five years ago and we won't ever go back. I worked for about seven years as a freelance artist for a fabric company in Oregon. Walmart bought their fabric for their stores and became their biggest client, so pretty soon the company was bending over to do whatever Walmart demanded of them. Move up design presentations from a half year in advance to a year in advance? Sure! Make up more models? Sure! They did everything to please the Walmart gods.
The fabric company had always done their printed fabric in South Carolina. Walmart wanted it cheaper and faster, of course, and that meant going to China to have the fabric printed. They finally sold their souls and did it.
Didn't matter. The company went under after that.
So I hate Walmart. They are destroyers.
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