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I don't think the divide is as big as you think-- lots and lots of upper-middle class people shop at Walmart because of its convenience. They probably don't buy
by dcurtis 19y ago
I don't think the divide is as big as you think-- lots and lots of upper-middle class people shop at Walmart because of its convenience. They probably don't buy jeans there because those are status items, but they do buy things like electronics, movies, books, magazines, food, etc.
The business magazines are probably the lowest sellers, but for Walmart that means millions upon millions of purchases. It's still an enormous blow to those magazines. But probably not enough to put them out of business, of course.
- mattmaroon 19y agoYou and I know different upper middle class people. If you walk into a Walmart, that definitely is not the apparent demographic. The middle class and up seems to prefer Target.
- dcurtis 19y agoHave you ever been to Florida?
- rms 19y agoI would agree with dcurtis, Walmart is not exclusively lower class. It's not the lower class buying things like this: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7756623 http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7756623
- mattmaroon 19y agoYes it is. Drive by any trailer park, each one of them has a DirecTV dish on top. This is the good old U.S.A., where not having money doesn't equal not spending money. And entertainment expenses are second only to food.
- pchristensen 19y agoActually it generally goes 1) housing 2) transportation 3) food, and pretty much everything else is single digit percentages of income. Also, DirecTV doesn't mean you have a nice TV - it probably means that cable isn't in the area or that spending $50 extra a month on satellite is a good investment if you watch a lot of TV as opposed to going out.
- mattmaroon 19y agoYour list is in terms of overall expense, but people will splurge more on entertainment than the rest. There are plenty of poor people with 42" LCD TVs.
- dcurtis 19y agoSadly, that's what the lower echelon uses credit cards for.
- mattmaroon 19y agoYep. They can't for housing and transportation, and food is paid for by uncle sam. But televisions are all Visa.
- pchristensen 19y agoLots of savvy higher-income shoppers know that paying $2 extra to buy a DVD or $5 extra to buy a video game somewhere else doesn't mean you got a better product. For commodities like packaged foods, batteries, household products, electronics, toys, etc that are the same no matter where you buy them, Wal-Mart is 10-20% cheaper than even Target. The reason more upper income people don't like Wal-Mart is either a) politics or b) many of the older stores are crowded and dirty and it's worth paying a little extra to have a more pleasant experience. I'm one of the second type, but there's a brand new Wal-Mart near my house that's the nicest big-box store I've ever shopped in, and since there's no "crowded and dirty tax" for me to pay, I do most of my shopping there and save some decent money each month.
- mattmaroon 19y agoI agree with you entirely. a is a small factor, b is a huge one, and c (image) is another. Many people don't want to be seen in a WalMart. It's silly, I admit, but it's most definitely true, and the way Target has taken advantage of those is perhaps the greatest untold story in the history of capitalism.
- mhb 19y agoOr Costco.