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Why would I, as a European, want to buy my groceries from an American company? It's not like the big shopping malls like Walmart or Costco are so appealing. Sur
by nomercy400 9y ago
Why would I, as a European, want to buy my groceries from an American company? It's not like the big shopping malls like Walmart or Costco are so appealing. Surely we can manage a suitable groceries network on our own.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoUnfortunately, as a mere customers, it's not up to you or me.
- bastawhiz 9y ago> the big shopping malls like Walmart or Costco I guess that's one way of thinking about them. If you haven't, I hope you never have the displeasure of visiting an actual American shopping mall.
- curiousgal 9y agoI am not an American but currently staying in the U.S., why is it a displeasure?
- tomc1985 9y agoThey really aren't all that different from shopping malls in other countries. Or, at least, Europe + Mexico
- oh_sigh 9y agoCostco is very appealing. Have you ever been?
- jypepin 9y agoMight be for the way American do groceries, and usually in Europe people are way more attracted by local, smaller scale stores and buy food almost exclusively day by day. So no, something like Costco where you can buy everything at 10x the scale to save some bucks might not be as appealing for the european market, which is more into local, healthy alternatives, despite being more expensive. source: I lived half my life in America, half in Europe.
- arkades 9y agoI really love and prefer the way grocery shopping is done in Europe, but it's fairly contingent on the ubiquity of those small grocers. In the US, a much larger / lower population density country, physically getting to a grocery on a daily basis isn't practical. I don't see this as being about "healthier alternatives" or "saving a few bucks." I can't do European-style grocery shopping in the US /despite/ my preference for it.
- oh_sigh 9y agoYou can do it, you just need to live in a city. If you need to drive 15 minutes each way to get to the grocery store, then doing that every day is a huge waste of time.
- jypepin 9y agoTrue. I wanted to say that it's bc europe is more populated in cities vs us, but didn't have anything back it up and wasn't sure it was true - but yeah, it's mostly because of city living, smaller grocers and smaller places with smaller room to store stuff :)
- anonu 9y agoYour comment points to the fact that the globalisation project we've embarked on for close to 70 years is either sick or dying... What does it matter if the company still employs Europeans and supports local economies?
- marindez 9y agoIt matters because we want control.
- tomc1985 9y agoAmerican business culture/ethic writ large is not really very compatible (or welcoming) of others' practices. Hegemony sucks when you're under it.
- ajdlinux 9y agoYou can employ local workers and stimulate the local economy - the owners of capital still extract profits and take them back home. All else being equal, a locally-owned business is better for the local economy than a foreign-owned business - which is not to say that foreign investment is a bad thing when it brings in more capital.
- btian 9y agoBecause Amazon.com is already popular in Europe. It's not that big a jump to also buy groceries from Amazon.
- jonknee 9y agoWell on the flip side, in America we seem to have no problems buying groceries from a European company (Aldi sells many times more groceries here than Amazon does, even counting Whole Foods).
- rjsw 9y agoWalmart now owns Asda, one of the supermarket chains in the UK.
- chrisper 9y agoDidn't Walmart once try to have stores in Germany but then gave up?
- allendoerfer 9y agoThere is a huge competition in Germany, when Aldi lowers prices for e.g. for milk, everyone else follows.
- Roritharr 9y agoYup, but the german groceries market is about the fiercest on the planet, price is king and the populace isn't easily wooed by additional service if it comes at a premium. Walmart couldn't compete with neither Aldi nor Rewe or anything in between.
- ghaff 9y agoThere's an Aldi literally right next door to a Walmart about 5 minutes from me in the US. Anecdotally, there never seem to many cars in the Aldi parking lot while Walmart is usually pretty busy. Personally, I stuck my nose in the Aldi once and pretty much decided after a couple of minutes there wasn't anything in there I'd go to a separate store to buy.
- Roritharr 9y agoThat's the point, consumer attitude is completely different in Germany than in the US. Saving 5€-10€ in aggregate is worth it to a lot of Germans.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gwatch 9y agoYou don’t have to buy from an American company. But you have no moral authority to force someone, in this case the owners of Carrefour, to do what you want them to do with their business. You’re not entitled to someone else’s labor or service. You’re arguing for socialism, and socialism is evil for the reason I mentioned above.
- NikolaeVarius 9y agoCostco is amazing and extremely efficient. Whats not appealing?
- runeks 9y agoWhy wouldn’t we, as Europeans, want the ability to buy groceries from an American company? If they offer better service we gain from that and, if they don’t, we can just ignore them and go about our business as usual.