Wal-Mart - No Longer The Lowest Prices

What happens when the deep discount shopping you thought you were getting isn't as deep as you thought?

One thing proponents of the proposed 25th Street Station development in Remington have been telling folks is that we need the low-cost, discount shopping opportunities that only a Wal-Mart can bring.

Nevermind the inherent flaws in such reasoning or the well-documented hidden-costs of Wal-Mart's low prices. The simple question is, are Wal-Mart's prices really that low?

Not according to a number of studies that have come out recently.

Customer Growth Partners has found that Wal-Mart is actually more expensive than Target (like the one in Mondawmin less than 5 minutes away from Remington).

And another study by Kantar Retail has found the same results.

"For the first time in four years, our price comparisons between the two has shown that Target has a slight edge over Wal-Mart," said Johnson. ...
...
If you factor in additional discounts offered to Target's Redcard customers, the savings gap widens more considerably between the two discounters.

A third group, McMillan/Doolittle, did their own study and also found similar results. Their study also found that Aldi/Trader Joe's (like the one a number of community members begged be brought into the development instead of the big box retailer) is cheaper than Wal-Mart.

For me, this study busted some myths, most notably that Walmart is always the lowest price. Target has come a long way toward narrowing that gap and has the muscle to back up its recent low price guarantees. And I'll definitely be giving Aldi another try. At those prices, I'd be a fool not too.

So this should put to bed the myth that any community "needs" the big box discount store because of its supposed "low" prices. Studies are showing that Wal-Mart discounts are simply not as good as other options.

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Comments

[Doug]

Too bad that Target treats its workers pretty much as poorly as Wal-Mart. Just as virulently anti-union, crap wages, crap benefits.

Pick your poison, I suppose.

[Chewy]

People could go to work for a small business man like the owner of Common Ground Coffee Shop on 36th Street in Hampden. That way they could get into the heroin game.

[Rusty Chompers]

Not sure what ol' Chewy's point is here or how the Common Ground has anything to do with Wal-Mart being more expensive than Target & Trader Joe's, but since they're inferring things not at all related to what I took to be the point of this post, how about this:

We could thank the 25th St. developers for bringing:
1. a rape region into our neighborhood:
http://tinyurl.com/44aortb
2. a murder mecca into our neighborhood:
http://tinyurl.com/3czwgp3
3. another drug den into our neighborhood:
http://tinyurl.com/3dawn6m