TimH said:Econ101 said:TimH said:You are absolutely right Econ. In fact, I'm so poorly educated, that I believed that Wal-Mart's ability to buy wholesale goods ,in sufficient quantity that they could get a volume discount and pass the savings on to me, was a GOOD thing. I'll rush right out and pay more than double for my oil from now on.
Thanks for enlightening me, ARROGANCE 101.![]()
So you can do part of the equation? This is scantron, all right or all wrong. Seperate market power and you will get the answer right. If you can not seperate out the market power, then have another go at it.
By the way, there are many times that other stores have lower prices than walmart. In our area walmart sends out their meat manager to the other stores so he can make his prices accordingly. It is kind of like being the last one to set prices and setting them just under your competitor's prices on the ones they advertise. You then can pull the rug out from under your competitor's advertising. Better yet, just tell everyone to bring in thier advertisements from other stores and say you will give them that price. That way you can get a free ride off of their advertisements.
Does this happen? All the time. Go ask the store manager at your nearest walmart. It is predatory advertising. Then we are left with advertisements of buy 2 get one instead of advertisements with price. It leaves out the price in the ad. Does Walmart honor these? NOOOOO! Does this help consumers who are sitting at home reading the paper get the benefit of knowing the price before they shop? No. It reduces the information that consumers have at their house and at their disposal. It cuts information out of the chain. You have to go to the stores and actually compare. Unfortunately, we do not buy much of our produce from walmart because when they made price the king over price/quality, we stopped buying from them.
You can pick a lot of examples out where walmart is cheaper. Sometimes they are better deals for you and sometimes they are not. The way they got those better deals is of concern to the producers of those supplies. If it comes out of their pockets instead of Walmart's margins because of market power, we are shooting our own producers in the foot.
You must realize that we are all producers of some form or another.
You must be able to seperate things out, Tim H., or do you just have a simple mind?
I have such a simple mind that I thought "seperate' was spelled "s-e-p-A-r-a-t-e". No matter. It just shows how poorly educated I are.
Perhaps you could seperate this out for me. Who has more "market power" when it comes to retailing hydraulic oil, Wal-Mart or Esso/Exxon??? :???: :???:
You were the first one to catch my spelling mistake, TimH. I was expecting MRJ to do it as she has before.
Exxon has more market power in the oil business. Their record profits prove it. Walmart has more on the retail side as a whole.
Can you "seperate" the difference between the abuse of market power between suppliers and lower costs due to efficiencies of scale? I will give you a hint--The Robinson Patman Act has done it for you. Coincidentally, that was the same place that the Appellate judges were wrong economically in the Pickett decision.