Amazon has recently declared that tomorrow is
Price Check day. If you go into a brick and mortar retail store with Amazon’s new
Price Check App on your smart phone, and scan a barcode with the location settings active, and then report back to Amazon on the price of that product, Amazon will deduct $5 from your online purchase of that product. Amazon claims it’s trying to keep prices low for consumers, but others attribute the move to
a less innocuous agenda.
[more inside]
posted by Toekneesan
on Dec 9, 2011 -
143 comments
A
new brand of super shoppers use coupons and other discounts to get products for absurdly low prices. The Web has turned this group from a series of independent operators into cohesive groups, frustrating retailers.
posted by reenum
on Dec 3, 2010 -
126 comments
Two articles about successful clothes retailers -
Uniqlo and
Abercrombie & Fitch - that are both full of interesting tidbits ("Uniqlo is a company that prescribes, records, and analyzes every activity undertaken by every employee, from folding technique to the way advisers return charge cards to customers. Japanese style, with two hands and full eye contact").
In addition, the two articles have a lot to say about branding and what companies place importance on - with A&F coming across as a typical fashion retailer, aggressively selling and marketing a very specific look, and Uniqlo seeming to be doing something quite different and contrary to received wisdom.
[more inside]
posted by Sifter
on May 15, 2010 -
44 comments
Ernest Kirschner, a 61-year-old business owner from East Haddam, is among thousands of Connecticut residents who may become the new voice of Walmart.
When the Benton, Ark.-based retailer formed its own "support group," the New England Customer Action Network, Kirschner signed up eagerly.
"I would stick up for Wal-Mart as strong as I can," said Kirschner, a frequent shopper. "I really think they've gotten an unfair shake."
Wal-Mart Forms Customer 'Support Group' To Counter Opponents [more inside]
posted by longsleeves
on Nov 14, 2008 -
21 comments
There's been much talk about the Supreme's decisions on
desegregation and
free speech, but another ruling with broad consumer impact has gone relatively unnoticed. In a
5-4 decision [PDF], the U.S. Supreme Court
struck down a 96-year-old ban on minimum pricing agreements between manufacturers and retailers. Dissenting opinion believes that this ruling will hurt consumers, raise prices and keep new retailers out of the marketplace. The 1911 ruling that was overturned was
Dr. Miles Medical Co. vs. John D. Park & Sons which decided that it is always illegal for a supplier to dictate minimum prices to a retailer.
posted by dejah420
on Jun 29, 2007 -
47 comments
Little Citadels. "Dine, shop, live, work, and be entertained in a unique and alluring environment," says the
Time Warner Center website - all without ever stepping outside your gleaming Manhattan skyscraper. San Jose's
Santana Row, which at first glance seemed no more than a
Beverly Center you can live in, is now being compared favorably to urban European living. And
MGM-Mirage's new,
mysterious and costly ($7 billion!)
Project CityCenter brings the trend to Las Vegas - with gambling, of course. They're not
Arcosantis - and they don't, as yet, require an
Oath of Fealty - but by all accounts they're
thriving. What do they have in common? Wealthy tenants, megacorporate sponsors, and a shared desire to integrate efficient, conspicuous consumption into every aspect of civic life.
Paolo Soleri may have been right after all - maybe he just forgot to
account for the effects of capitalism.
posted by ikkyu2
on Aug 28, 2006 -
24 comments
Big Box Juggernauts are taking control of the landscape across North America. How does it impact how we live, and where we live? [Flash]
posted by benjh
on Feb 21, 2004 -
29 comments
WalmartFilter: "Wal-Mart controls a large and rapidly increasing share of the business done by most every major U.S. consumer-products company: 28% of Dial total sales, 24% of Del Monte Foods, 23% of Clorox, 23% of Revlon... Wal-Mart plans to open 1,000 more supercenters in the U.S. alone over the next five years.. giving it control over 35% of U.S. food sales and 25% of drugstore sales...The $12 billion worth of Chinese goods Wal-Mart bought in 2002 represented 10% of all U.S. imports from China." Setting aside questions of monopoly, isn't this a potentially
dangerous monoculture?
posted by alms
on Oct 15, 2003 -
95 comments
Learn How to Make Change. Having never had to work retail and wanting to learn bartending, I found the FunBrain Change Maker to be a useful game where the player calculates the change given for a money purchase.
posted by johnnydark
on Sep 18, 2003 -
18 comments
The future of music retail... will be nothing like this. Echo Networks, a Los Angeles based "digital venture", in partnership with Best Buy, Tower, Wherehouse, Virgin & FYE, has launched an instore downloadable purchase initiative whose chances of failure are only exceeded by the extreme vagueness surrounding the announcement.
For more, read the news article at
CNET.
posted by jonson
on Jan 27, 2003 -
14 comments
Happy Thanksgiving or Is It? In
1939, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responed to pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to move the official date of Thanksgiving back one week to the next-to-last Thursday of the month. FDR hoped that this would enliven the economy by adding one week to the Christmas shopping season, but he received considerable
political flak for tampering with what many viewed as a sacred religious holiday. (Thanksgiving is considered sacred even though it only became a national holiday due to lobbying by
the editor of a 19th century woman's magazine.) New Deal-era Republicans were especially bothered by the calendar change and one essayist at the
American Enterprise Institute still seems to carry a grudge. Congress later resolved the issue by passing a resolution in
1941 that designated Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November.
posted by jonp72
on Nov 26, 2002 -
11 comments
A New Milestone for Video Games? "Three of the nation's top retailers, including Wal Mart, on Monday said they had refused to carry a new video game billed as the first major release to feature full-action nudity and with prostitutes and pimps as major characters." I enjoyed their
"banned ads" myself.
posted by owillis
on Oct 14, 2002 -
36 comments
The Nametag Nation gets a voice online.
Retail Workers along with our brethren in
food service are the bulk of the nations clock-punchers now, and we've got a lot on our minds. Some sites, like the above linked, offer info on serious concerns.
Other sites just let us vent. You may not agree with what we think, but we deserve to be heard from.
posted by jonmc
on Jul 16, 2002 -
29 comments
urban coffee opportunities according to this map, there are 38 starbucks within my area code alone. and right down the block, there are 2 out of 4 storefronts, of which this map only notes one: meaning there are more coffee opportunities available.
this is the full link, since i think the first one got cut off.
idea from adbusters, but i did the work myself!
posted by whoshotwho
on Nov 16, 2001 -
40 comments
Nordstrom, J.C. Penney, and FTD take some advice from Yahoo's porn advocates and drop Christian on-line store because of its connections to the American Family Association. Just Surreal. Or The Power of Porn?
posted by skallas
on Jun 3, 2001 -
8 comments
Apple Goes Retail: Good Idea? As this NYTimes Article describes, Apple is planning to open about a dozen stores nationwide. Because Apple specializes in aesthetically pleasing hardware, I actually think this is a good idea for them.
posted by ParisParamus
on May 8, 2001 -
34 comments
