Wal-Mart… the NY Times of the consumer world
Many of you might have noticed significant price-drops in plasma, flat-panel, and LCD TVs in the last few months. Turns out, you have Wal-Mart to thank; they slashed prices in half on their flat panel TVs to less than $1000 last November causing an uproar in the consumer electronics industry. The move left stores like Circuit City, h.h. greg, Best Buy, Tweeter Home Entertainment Group, Rex Stores and other electronics retailers to shut down (in some cases) nearly half of all their retail stores. Stock prices and profits plummeted for these stores, employees were laid off, and Wal-Mart just got more popular. Talk about busting the competition’s gonads. All these retailers were forced to follow suit in at least some sort of similar fashion, but if the trend continues, will Wal-Mart finally take over the world?
I’m not one to complain at all about lower prices on luxury items (though, I still can’t afford a flat-panel), but it just seems pretty bold to try and essentially take over an industry which only makes up about 2,000 square feet of your 80,000 sq. ft. stores.
Wal-Mart’s official line? “We want to be your low-price leader in the industry.”
Read about it here