Category: Retailing

Forced Participation

Retailing

Of late, there’s been a lot of what I’ve come to call “forced participation” in that after almost every retail transaction, it seems, one has to respond to a follow-up questionnaire on said transaction.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind, but the problem is that this is becoming increasingly tiresome.  FFS, the transaction took at most a minute, which is what one would expect from a routine transaction, and now I have to take three minutes to say the thing was worth 5 stars?  Frankly, given that the transaction was unexceptional — I paid my money, got the item, all pretty normal — in the normal scheme of things I’d just give it three stars and away we go.

Except that’s not how it works these days, is it? because now Management uses these “service metrics” as a performance indicator for the staff member in question, and (I’m told) anything less than 5 stars has (bad) consequences for the employee come salary review time, or bonus time for that matter.

So now one is more or less compelled to give 5 stars regardless (unless the service was crap, in which case the reduced star count is or should be unexpected).

And here’s the problem.  If five stars is de rigeur, then how do we describe or reward outstanding service?  Like so much grading nowadays, if everyone gets an A, then what is the worth of an A?

I remember once awarding a single star (because I couldn’t give 0 or a negative) for a truly horrendous experience.  The problem was, as I explained to the drone who actually called me to see what had happened (!), that the problem was not with the customer service rep — who had been truly excellent, by the way — but with the corporation’s stupid policy, something over which the poor girl had no control.  But what was I supposed to do?  Give five stars for a monumental clusterfuck?  How does that help?

The situation didn’t improve when I asked the supervisor if I was going to get a survey on his service call, because he hadn’t helped the situation either.  At the end of it, I simply told the supervisor that the outcome was that I was never going to do business with his company ever again, given their shitty policy and terrible backup.  (And I never have.)

As with so many of he little technologies that have injected themselves into our lives of late, this one is being misused (even abused) by people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing and don’t know how to set up or manage information streams.

A plague on all their houses.

Oh, and there will be a followup post on a related matter, all about how I stopped doing business with a longtime service provider precisely because they’ve started abusing the data that I’ve been exchanging with them.  I have to allow a little time to pass before I do because if I rant about what I really think at the moment, there could be lawyers (theirs, of course).

Watch this space.

Update:  Got another one just this morning.

“You recently made contact with Tina at our Customer Service Center. As one of Tina’s customers, we believe you are the most relevant and credible expert to offer advice to help Tina continue to improve. Tina would love your help and it should only take two minutes. Click on the button below to take the survey.”

Yeah, “Tina would love your help” — like she’ll ever see my input other than if I call her service (which was outstanding, by the way) terrible.

Assholes.

Consolidation

Marketing / Advertising, Retailing, Toys

According to this rather lengthy video, Rolex is dropping hundreds of smaller Rolex “dealer” outlets and instead creating Rolex megastores in “prime” locations such as London (!!!) and Manhattan (!!!).

It would appear that the main reason behind this is that Rolex wants to protect their brand by limiting the number of outlets, dropping smaller stores (regardless of relationship longevity) so that they can control the whole “Rolex buying experience” and provide their customers with the proper treatment with fine ambience, better-trained staff and so on.  Also, these larger stores can carry the extensive Rolex range that a smaller store couldn’t.

It all sounds well and good, except that the actual reason, it seems to me, is that during the sales spike caused largely by the Great Covid Panic of 2020, the people who really made money weren’t Rolex themselves but the profiteers who bought their watches and resold them on the “grey” market — and Rolex, like Ferrari, wants to keep as much of the market to themselves.  (Same tactics, different product.)

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with what they’re doing. As long as there are people willing to pay the inflated prices of their products, then good luck to them.

My own personal take on the thing is that I’m indifferent because (regardless of any lottery winning) I would never be a Rolex  sucker  buyer in the same way as Ferrari would forever be outside my list of automotive choices (except maybe a Dino, although given the current price list of same… nah, never mind).  Sorry, I’m no longer impressed by brand names, especially when the brand’s “value” is artificially pumped up by fools and suckers with more money than sense.  And even more so when the brand operates in a commodity category like watches.

And finally, I happen to think that those big, blocky things like the Submariner are just… ugly.  I’m not a scuba diver so I’ll never need one, and anyway, there are other watches just as good for half the price and a tenth of the Rolex attitude (once again, see:  Ferrari dealers).

A pox on all their houses.

Here We Go Again

Retailing

In another one of those “Custer Having Difficulties With The Sioux” headlines, we have this nonsense from the Truly Ignorant:

Supermarket bosses are under fire for charging higher prices in shops serving the UK’s poorer communities while customers in leafy suburbs pay less. An investigation by MPs found food can be up to 38% more expensive in smaller “local” or “express” stores, which typically serve lower-income customers, than in full-blown supermarkets owned by the same company, often in wealthier areas or accessible to customers with access to transport.

There’s so much foolishness in this article that I even hesitate to talk about it.  But what the heck, here we are so I might as well.

Actually, as I’ve said before, “zone pricing” is not only common, it’s ubiquitous.  That policy is very much driven by market forces — whether it’s a higher incidence of shoplifting, or the higher cost of doing business (compare the rental cost of a city vs. suburban store, for example) — the simple fact remains that in order to maintain profitability (e.g. sales per square foot at x% gross profit), some stores will have to charge more for the same items than others.

Ignore too the wealth envy in the article — “poor people aren’t as mobile as wealthy people, so they’re trapped into paying higher prices” — because it isn’t relevant:  organizations don’t charge more because of profit opportunity unless they’re a monopoly and can afford to do so.

Of course politicians (and journalists) are going to get involved because it’s an easy way for them to garner both publicity and popularity.  The facts of the issue aren’t important as long as they are Seen To Be Doing Something.

And of course when inner-city stores are forced to close because of government action, the Pore Folx are going to find themselves in a “food desert” that is entirely of their own and their politicians’ making — and I for one will have a simple reaction to this situation:

Stupidity should be punished and not rewarded.

New Ideas

Marxists, Retailing

Longtime Friend & Reader Weetabix writes:

Given your history with grocery stores, do you have any thoughts on the Mamdani (Commie, Muslim) plan for government-run grocery stores (“public option”) in NYC?

I foresee:
– low prices because subsidized
– private stores and bodegas priced out of business
– “public option” stores lock everything up because of theft/vandalism
– public outrage at people’s unfair treatment due to what they brought on themselves
– “public option” stores close
– wailing and gnashing of teeth at the new “food desert”

…but, of course, I’m a cynic.

I have no thoughts other than Mr. Bix’s well-reasoned points — in fact, many thanks are due for saving me from having to think about the situation.

Every time Commies try this nonsense they encounter what we call “market experience”, and they call “greedy capitalism”.  There are many such (as outlined above) but allow to address but one, that of prices.

You can’t sell anything at “cost” (i.e. what you paid for the merchandise as it arrives at the store, or F.O.B. — free on board — as usually stated).  What that does is make your retail outlet a losing proposition (what’s nowadays referred to as “unsustainable”).  This remains true even if the operating costs of the establishment (rent, utilities, equipment, salaries etc.) are wholly assumed by city government, as this Marxist asshole proposes.  The drain on tax revenue will be horrendous, even for just the six stores — which by the way will also be denied the benefits of non-issued sales taxes under this loony scheme.  And I haven’t even touched on the city’s subsidization of yet-lower prices, which will not only drain revenues but also increase demand.  And speaking of which:

…ummm only six stores to cover the whole five boroughs of NYfC?  Expect long queues and lengthy waits at the registers as the stores struggle to cope with the (unexpectedly) high demand — and high demand there will be in plenty because if they think that only the Pore&Starvin denizens of NYfC will attempt to avail themselves of these lower prices, they don’t know much about New York.  [200 examples from personal experience omitted for reasons of brevity]

To use a not-so-long-ago example from Marxist establishments of, say, Soviet Russia (Moscow Version):

Whether the famously-impatient Noo Yawkers will stay as docile as their Moscow counterparts will be established on Day One of this Glorious Leap Forward — let me get out ahead of the thing by stating that there’ll be riots and rampant looting, you betcha.

But hey:  never let it be said that I stood in the way of stupid people making stupid decisions and trying stupid experiments, especially when the victims of said stupidity actually voted for all that.

I look forward to Comrade Mamdani’s “new” initiatives (and their unexpected! outcomes) with great anticipation, as will Reader Weetabix and the rest of you.

Let the (Hunger) Games begin.

Don’t Care

Corporate Fuckery, Retailing

Of course we saw this coming:

Walmart is warning it plans to raise prices due to tariffs, despite the fact April’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) showing President Donald Trump’s tariffs did not affect consumer prices.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon issued the update during an earnings call on Thursday, stating that they will try to keep prices “low as possible,” but the reality is, they are unable to absorb all of the costs due to tariffs.

“But given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins,” McMillon stated, adding, “The higher tariffs will result in higher prices.” 

Utter bullshit.  As far as I can see, the tariffs may have affected the price of Chinese goods, but if anything, the goods made in places like Thailand, Taiwan and Pakistan should be reduced with all those other countries getting lower or non-existent tariffs.  So yeah, some of Walmart’s prices on Chinese merchandise should go up, but what they’ll do is raise all their prices to minimize the much-higher Chinese prices.  It’s called “spreading the load” in retail-speak.

Don’t care, because I’ll just stop buying non-foods at Walmart until things quieten down, and buy only the foodstuffs there that I absolutely cannot get anywhere else.  Last time I looked, that’s only one product, and amazingly, it’s made in the U.S.A. anyway.

Besides, if Walmart were truly committed to keeping prices lower, they’d improve their efficiency by ditching their fucking ultra-woke DEI practices — which would never have been instituted in the first place had Sam Walton still been around.  But they’re not going to do that, are they?

Feel free to do what you think is proper in your own circumstances.

But for me?  Toodle-oo, WallyWorld.

BFD

Marketing / Advertising, Retailing

The above title does not stand for “Big Fucking Deal”, although given the average tenor of this website, you may be forgiven for thinking so.

In the grocery retailing business, BFD stands for “Best Food Day”;  that day of the week when grocery stores launch their weekly price discounts on selected items.

The actual day varies from chain to chain, or from one area to another.  Back when I was in the business, one chain’s BFD was on Thursdays, when they dropped their weekly flyer (called a “roto” because of the printing process);  their competitor’s might be on a Friday to capitalize on the weekend’s expected sales uptick, and yet another competitor — whose typical shopper might trend towards an elder demographic — might have their BFD the day after Social Security payments were made… and so on.

Nowadays, I think the BFD concept might have disappeared to a greater or lesser degree because of changes in shopping habits by customers, whether online, delivery, at-store pickup and Internet deals.

I’ve certainly noticed this at Kroger — where I do perhaps 90% of my shopping — because not only have they de-emphasized the roto (the price deals aren’t as aggressive as they once were), there also seems to be a large number of Internet-delivered promotions that you have to visit their website to activate.  And of course, there are the “loyalty card-only” deals which are their way of tracking customer shopping habits (I think;  I haven’t seen much in the way of targeted deals the way I used to deliver them — a topic for another time).

In case anyone’s interested about the other 10% of my grocery shopping, it’s split between Market Street (a Texas chain, owned by Albertson’s) and Wal-Mart, both only for very specific items (e.g. Market Street’s French baguettes and rolls, which are superb and rival the baguettes I tasted in Paris).

Side note:  when I still lived in Plano, I shopped a lot at Central Market (H.E.B.’s upscale outlet), but they saw fit to discontinue several of my favorite products which they carried exclusively — e.g. Old Forest Salami and Jambon de Paris  sliced ham — so there’s no need to go there anymore.  And in any event, their prices were stratospheric before, but since Bidenflation have become frankly unreachable to One Of Fixed Income Like Me.  Also, their South Plano store is now too far from my place to justify the long trip, so there ya go.

By the way, I see that eggs are now selling for $3.99/dozen at Kroger — by “eggs” I mean eggs that we peasants generally eat and not the boutique premium stuff hatched in coops run by virgins and laid by hens sprinkled with holy water.  Limit 2 packs per customer, but not enforced if you buy two packs, take your groceries out to the car and then go back into the store and buy another two, etc.  (Once again, I used to enforce limits by putting a stop on the loyalty card daily quantities.)  Although I cannot see who would need more than two dozen eggs per day unless you have four teenage sons and/or are running a commercial home bakery as a sideline.

I forgot where I was going with this post, but I assure you there was a point to all of it — I just can’t remember what it was.  If I do remember (doubtful), I’ll follow up some other time.