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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: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @02:19AM (3 children)
This is about add-on-sales. Store shoppers buy more impulse items than online shoppers. Getting you into a store is what is in Walmart's best interest.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday November 17 2017, @02:39AM (1 child)
And, if the truth be know, walking around and buying things you might need next week just because you happeded to see them is probably way better for the environment than you ordering something today, then another thing tomorrow, and the day after.
Planning ahead saves trips, gasoline, and packaging. If your foresight is dim and upi plan poorly the next best thing probably seeing all the crap and do a weeks shopping in one trip.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:04PM
Granted. But when I had kids under the age of four I was so tired all the damn time I couldn't plan out a meal of dry Cheerios and the next load of laundry, let alone plan out household needs for a week. So I'm sympathetic to anyone with young kids that can't muster the mental energy to shop efficiently.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 17 2017, @06:26AM
You and the parent comment to which you responded are both correct, but there is a third element -- Having to deal with the packs of Mexicans (now usually In these kinds of situations I would also include the Blacks, but the Blacks are conspicuously absent from California Wal-Marts, likely due to the fact that they do all of their grocery shopping at 7-11 instead).
When I was a young kid on the football team, "being born in the Wal-mart parking lot" was one of the more common insults the Blacks used against the Mexicans.