Walmart is taking a bit of an nontraditional approach to boost sales ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events by raising prices for products sold online and discounting those same items in physical retail stores. According to The Wall Street Journal, the big-box store has quietly raised prices for household and food items such as toothbrushes, macaroni and cheese, and dog food on its website while the prices in stores remained the same. If there are price discrepancies between online and in-store purchases, Walmart will now highlight this on the product's web listing to encourage customers to buy them from their local stores.
It's all part of an effort to increase foot traffic as Walmart continues to compete with Amazon just about everywhere else.
[...] With the new pricing strategy, a twin-pack of Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper costs $3.30 on Walmart.com, but goes as low as $2.50 if purchased at a store in Illinois. The aim is to also help reduce processing costs and increase online sales margins, since driving customers to stores means less shipping costs for the retailer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Friday November 17 2017, @01:04AM (2 children)
I want the best price without having to think about it. If there's any uncertainty, I'll just shun your stupid store online and possibly offline.
Well then what is the point of a minimum $35 [soylentnews.org] or whatever it is now to get free shipping? Just charge for shipping or allow free shipping for all items.
I noticed the same with Costco, didn't use their crap online service (with very limited selection) and don't have a membership there anymore.
Just shop at ALDI. They know how to cut costs.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday November 17 2017, @02:34AM
Could be that this time of year that doesn't work so well. Roads, rail, and air shippers are swamped, stuff arrives
late, gets lost, and shippers raise prices too
Besides, if you go to Walmart they know you will buy more than a case of dog food once they get you in the store.
Folks not living close or not having a car will pay the extra, but I suspect most others would just put off buying till the next time they drive in that direction.
Games with prices have been going on forever. If you blacklisted every retailer that played them, pretty soon you'd be out back mixing dog food from the tripe left over from the deer you shot with the bow and arrow you carved from the tree you chopped down.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:07AM
The point of the $35 minimum is to make it less likely that they'll be selling cheap items at a loss.
Driving people to the stores means that rather than boxing up individual items and loading them onto trucks, they ship large amounts of them at the same time to the same place and the customer gets to worry about the last mile.
I'm not really sure what's so confusing about that.