Talk Elections

What German retailing company could be best comparable with Walmart ☀ in terms of range of products and reputation?

I'd say Metro AG. Their Real hypermarkets are similar to Walmart's Supercenters.

Is it correct that you can buy anything at Walmart, from foodstuffs over apparel up to guns, right?

Not every Walmart contains a full-service supermarket. There are still some smaller, older stores that only carry a limited selection of foodstuffs. Walmart often expands these stores into (or replaces them entirely with) Supercenters (which combine a department store and full-service supermarket) when it gets the opportunity.

A typical old-school Walmart:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ncmike1981/32900060074/ (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ncmike1981/32900060074/)

A typical Supercenter:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhale/14878419931/ (https://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhale/14878419931/)

As for guns, Walmart sells them in every state but California, Hawaii, and my home state of New Jersey.

Walmart is disgusting, it sends shivers up my spinal cord just thinking of it. Gross.

What about Walmart's reputation, or rather its patrons? When ever I read, hear or see something about it, I perceive it as an allegory of white trash, uneducated, overweight America. Maybe I could be wrong, but these views are always connected with Walmart.

Yup, I started shopping at Walmart when I became a Republican. Makes me feel good to be among my people.

I once saw a loudmouthed fat lady that looked like a bulldog pull a wad of rolled up cash out of her sweaty, sunburnt cleavage and start handing them to the cashier.

The worst part?

Her children were on leashes.

I don't know if that is supposed to be sarcasm, cause I've seen such a picture of Walmart.

It's probably not that uncommon.  I definitely am speaking from experience.

I've found an interesting map about Walmart:

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The key to their rise was their excellent distribution system.

https://tinyurl.com/y9yskltj (https://tinyurl.com/y9yskltj)

The Waltons have ~$126 billion in total wealth today. Walmart has put Arkansas on the map as the home of one of the, if not the, richest families on the planet.

So, Walmart is only one of three things your state is famous for.

Well, the Walton family in general. They have are actually, IIRC, the third richest family in the world. Only the Rothschilds and Saudis are above them, and those two have been rich for far longer.

I actually thought of Bill Clinton and Evanescence as being the other things.

:-)

Wal-Mart’s chief retail competitor, especially in the Midwest and west coast, is Target...which has a much better reputation.

Their Super Target (a Target store with a full scale grocery store) concept has not been nearly as successful as Wal-Mart so they have focused on expanding the limited grocery options at their traditional format stores.  Target is also doing well competing with online retailers by building stores in urban areas and offering delivery, store pickup, and free shipping without any membership required.

They have been much better than Wal-Mart in urban environments
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Philadelphia

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Chicago

A typical suburban Target with the Greatland concept which basically has more lifestyle merchandise (sports, outdoors, clothing)
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Those Target sub-brands are obsolete. Greatland is dead. Even the "Super" has been dropped from "Super Target".  They are all just "Target"s again.

https://corporate.target.com/article/2018/03/store-remodels?preset=60x60crop

https://corporate.target.com/press/multimedia/2018/07/2018-Store-Remodels

This reputation is mostly because Walmart is the only big-box retailer with significant locations in rural and small town America.  Walmart's competiters like Target tend to be much more concentrated in urban or suburban areas. 

Despite the perception that Target is "higher end" than Walmart, Walmart's financials are in much better position and I imagine that they will outlast Target by decades.  Target's problem is that they attempt to compete for higher-end "suburban" shoppers in areas where that demographic has ample boutique or specialty retail options.  Walmart's philosophy is to basically be the only game in town for the millions of rural Americans in the South and Midwest.

I don't think Target being "higher-end" than Wal-Mart is perception necessarily. The issue is that middle-market retail is struggling, but low-end retail is doing well, generally, across the board. It's not just Wal-Mart - sellers of true crap like Dollar Tree/Family Dollar and Dollar General are also flourishing. Target suffers because it's trying to focus on middle-income buyers more than low-income buyers, but middle-income is a tough market these days.

I actually don't think I've been inside a Wal-Mart, or at least not more than once or twice in my life. There is no Wal-Mart in NYC even today, I don't think (or if one has opened in the past few years, it's not transit-accessible).

Yes.  Middle-income retail is harder because your shoppers have more opportunities of where to shop - namely local boutiques, specialty stores, department stores, and online.  Middle income people still spend beaucoup money on retail, it's just increasingly online or in specialty outlets.

Also, think about how much of Walmart's sales are driven by household and perishable items (i.e., groceries, toiletries, cleaning supplies, etc.) versus Target, whose sales are more reliant on apparel, personal accessories, and home goods.  The retail markets where Target currently excels are much more likely to be replaced by online options.

FWIW I actually have a couple of pieces of clothing from Target's Goodfellow (https://www.target.com/c/goodfellow-co/-/N-g3j5e?lnk=Goodfellow) brand and was surprisingly satisfied with them.

Walmart is very convenient. They opened one in my hometown (exurban, less than 10,000 people on the fringes of Indy) and there haven’t been any negative results so far. I don’t usually shop there but people who blame societies ills in Walmart or think of it as some kind of horrible place are pretty amusing. It’s just a giant retail store that caters to working and middle class people. If you prefer smaller stores, that’s great too.

Atlas is the kinda place that would sneeringly look down on people who buy clothes from Target... but I think you can get great value out of Target's clothes.  Also, Target has this odd reputation of being where you go to buy a swimsuit when you need one right away.

Target really struggled mid-decade because of their disastrous entrance and retreat from the tasteless retail blackhole that is Canada.

Revenue growth was very good in 2018 but margins have been suppressed because of increased expenses in expanding delivery/online options and also increased store hours and employee wages.  They are raising their minimum pay to $15/hour by next year.

They're also launching a whole bunch of new apparel/accessory brands, especially for children because while birth rates are down, spending on baby/childrens' apparel is up.

This idea that Wal-Mart is where you go for sundries and you go to Target to buy a cute bracelet and a napkin holder isn't really true.  The urban smaller format Targets focus on the basics the most knowing you can get the napkin holder at Williams Sonoma.  Their competitors are CVS and Walgreens in these areas.

What had been hurting Wal-Mart earlier in the decade was online competition and competition from below.  Someone beat Wal-Mart at their game and stores like Family Dollar and Dollar Tree have done incredibly well.  They are capturing the dollars of the working poor.  I imagine Aldi would really hurt Wal-Mart's grocery bottom line in these rural areas as well.

Target is kinda stuck between Wal-Mart, online shopping, specialty stores, and the dying behemoth department stores from which it was borne.  But I think they'll do fine.

I know you don't live in MN now but Target just remodeled every store in the Twin Cities area last year and most include now a beer/wine store among other things, and they dropped the "Super", Greatland, etc subnames.

Well, I'd argue that Target has crafted a different brand image compared to Walmart, Walgreens, or CVS. It's always been my perception that Target featured a better and higher quality selection of most consumer goods when compared with a store like Walmart. Places like Williams Sonoma are more of a speciality store to begin with; Target's brand covers a broader width of products.

That's my perspective; when Target came to my hometown, they featured grocery shopping and clothing right off the bat.

I almost never go to Walmart ☀. I've been to a couple, but never to get anything big.

Target's way better, well, that and there aren't any Walmart ☀s close to my house (besides a Walmart ☀ Neighborhood Market, which doesn't really count).

I just really don't think this is true.  Consider the relative amount of floor space dedicated to apparel/home goods vs groceries/sundries in a suburban Target vs a suburban Walmart.  Also consider that Target has several differentiated store brands for these items, whereas (I think) Walmart only has a single store brand for each differentiated product.  While I don't have any raw data to back this up, I think it's pretty apparent based on retail placement/product promotion that Target relies much more on what I'll call "single purpose retail" - that is, people making a dedicated trip to a specific store to buy a specific item (typically apparel or a home decor item).  That's exactly what makes them much more vulnerable to being "squeezed out" by online or local retail options.

CVS and Walgreens are really different animals in retail because 1) they're primarily retail pharmacies and 2) they compete spatially.  Since the local retail footprint of a CVS/Walgreens is quite small (no one is going to drive across town to go to one), they compete for your dollar by being the closest, most convenient option.  That's why a CVS will open up right across the street from a Walgreens (or vice versa) - because consumers don't really care which one they go to, they'll just go to whichever one is closer.  The convenience thing also results in CVS/Walgreens being a lot smaller than Target/Walmart (the point is to get shoppers in and out quickly), which makes them very well-suited to urban environments.  Target has to some extent copied this model in urban areas, but it's not their default or preferred store layout.

You are not wrong that Target and Wal-Mart do have differences in which departments they devote different amounts of space to... but it's not "basic sundries" vs "softlines and housewares"

Target devotes almost no space to automotive and relatively little to outdoors outside of what you might find on a deck or suburban backyard.  Sporting goods is also similarly underlooked.

But laundry detergent, household cleaning supplies and appliances, etc is at least the same.