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>part of the department store experience is the relative expertise of staff in each department > Costco/Walmart ... There is very little effort made to present
by bane 2y ago
>part of the department store experience is the relative expertise of staff in each department
> Costco/Walmart ... There is very little effort made to present the goods, it's all about high volume and the lowest possible price.
I can see that perspective, but it's actually quite wrong. Costco (and similar) put significant effort into buying and presenting high quality goods. Their value proposition is that they don't need on-hand staff with relative expertise trying to match the consumer to product.
A century-plus of data on consumer buying habits have allowed them to engineer an environment where their value proposition is that they are only presenting to the customer good quality for price items. The limited, rotating, selection is Costco (and similar) putting their relative expertise on the shelf and there's tremendous money spent by these companies figuring out how to do this.
The "warehouse" environment is just another method to drive down costs in addition to eliminating pushy salespeople. Costco offers you usually one or two choices for an item, maybe for a few months, then it rotates out. Which one do you buy? It doesn't matter, they're both going to be of reasonable quality and value - a salesperson would try to direct a customer the same way. The stock rotation creates scarcity, but a good salesperson would let the consumer know "this sale is only valid for the next few days!" to create the same sense of urgency.
These companies have huge analytics departments figuring out where the dairy should be in relation to the car batteries, and for how long they should have the special display for fresh shrimp running.
Costco wants consumers to feel like they are getting wholesale prices. But the actual wholesale experience is completely different. Actual wholesale buying experiences are in some ways closer to the traditional buying experience. You're usually dealing with salespeople, hired by the originating company, who try to align you with the long tail of their product offering. Big wholesale markets even advertise that you get to meet salespeople and negotiate buying terms.
https://youtu.be/RDd10-poMm8 https://youtu.be/RDd10-poMm8
- Supermancho 2y ago> Costco (and similar) put significant effort into buying and presenting high quality goods. That's a subjective statement. Costco's brands and products have been so consistently poor (and overpriced), we switched to Sams Club.
- tshaddox 2y agoSubjective indeed. I also like Sam’s, but mostly because they are essentially the same as Costco but with slightly different versions of things. While Costco has some stinkers, I still rely on them as a reliable source for generic products.
- sutra_on 2y agoWhen talking about department stores people in Europe will likely mean something like Selfridges in London, not Costco or Walmart. A vast difference in service and presentation.
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoQuality companies can't survive on making 'limited, rotating selection'. Costco's model only works when piggybacking off of a long term model capable of sustaining the suppliers between 'limited Costco' manufacturing runs by selling products continually. The system is eating itself and we are at the point in this new cycle where it's showing.
- Earw0rm 2y agoThe wholesalers I'm thinking of are the "cash and carry" warehouse variety - Makro, Booker and so on. I don't mean Costco haven't put thought into what they're doing, but there is no attempt to create a perception of aesthetic value - indeed, quite the opposite to communicate their no-frills value of "the most stuff for the least money".