Archived Customers Flee Wal-Mart Empty Shelves for Target, Costco

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It's probably worse at Wal-Mart. What's ridiculous is Target is blindly following the same strategy even while seeing that this is happening. Chinks are starting to appear in Wal-Mart's armor and it would be a prime time to start hitting them where it hurts by doing what Target used to be known for...a higher level of guest service, with a well trained and full staff, not a skeleton crew. The guests you'd take away from Wal-Mart and all of their money would far exceed the crap wages you'd be paying the extra TMs, and although crappy you'd probably reduce turnover rates by offering more FT jobs and better training. You'd also reduce costs on the HR side by preventing HR from CONSTANTLY onboarding people due to the ridiculous rate of turnover caused by the factos illustrated above. It's so simple. You make an investment in your workers, and they will do right by you. If you don't, you reap a short term gain and afterwards your reputation suffers and it is very difficult to gain consumer trust again.
 
But it's sooooo expensive. It's much more affordable to have a line entirely full of pallets just sitting in receiving. And pallets of backstock just sitting around. Because more workers are going to hurt the bottom line more than that. Gotta love short term thinking.
 
I've had quite a few customers complain that we never have enough of the "sale items" in stock. I can't count the number of times I've looked for an item for a guest on Monday or even Sunday afternoon and we've either never had it or sold out of it. Some of them have been wiped out by couponers, but others have never even come in (obviously HBA merch since I usually only look for things near pharmacy). Most recently, it was the Allegra "bonus packs" that were on sale a few weeks ago. Our store never even got them and we had a TON of guests looking for them. We also had a group of couponers COMPLETELY wipe us out of razors one Sunday morning (all of which reappeared throughout the week...)
 
We leave tons of pallets in receiving because we aren't given the hours to push the freight to the floor.

But it's all in the name of saving monies.
 
Off topic a bit, but on that coupon tangent, if Target would make the system adjust prices for coupons on the receipt it would stop people buying items with coupons and returning the item for the value of the item plus coupon value. I know it adjust correctly for Target coupons they just need to do this for manufacturer coupons as well.
 
^No can do.
When a guest uses a manf coupon, we get reimbursed for it. If the guest returns it, we have to give them the retail value (not what they paid) because we would be committing a double jeopardy by getting reimbursed AND keeping the difference between the retail & what the guest actually paid.
If Carrie Coupon-nut buys a $4 air-freshener with a $2-off coupon, she only pays $2. Spot gets reimbursed $2.08 from the manf. If Carrie returns the air freshener & spot only gives her the $2, spot is KEEPING the $2.08 from the manf despite getting the merch back.
With spot coupons, Target is the 3rd party vendor so we're not getting reimbursed by anyone & they can adjust the refund price to reflect that.
 
It might vary from store to store, but Target seems to have a much better logistics process than Walmart from what I can tell at first glance (lets just stay Backstocking is MUCH more efficient at Tarjay...). Wally does have a much better sales floor presence in their stores than Target though, so theres several sides to it.
 
Costco, which offers a starting hourly wage of $11.50 in all states and employee schedules that are generally predictable, has higher worker productivity and a lower rate of turnover than its competitors, Ton found.

And Spot always says they pay competitively.
Doesn't seem like much of a contest.
 
Not so good for Target but, a plus for my bank account is that my wife spends less time shopping in Target now because, the shelves are empty and a mess all the time. And now as a shopper and not a team member I notice more and more what garbage dumb the one spot stuff up front looks like. I was just so used to it while working their I never noticed what a terrible impression it makes walking in the door.
 
Chinks are starting to appear in Wal-Mart's armor

What?

It's an old expression. From Wikipedia:

The idiom "chink in one's armor" refers to an area of vulnerability. It has traditionally been used to refer to a weak spot in a figurative suit of armor, but the word "chink" can also be used to derogatorily refer to Chinese people. The standard meaning is similar to that of Achilles' heel.

Thanks, I was confused since I only hear that word in a derogatory sense.
 
It might vary from store to store, but Target seems to have a much better logistics process than Walmart from what I can tell at first glance (lets just stay Backstocking is MUCH more efficient at Tarjay...). Wally does have a much better sales floor presence in their stores than Target though, so theres several sides to it.

You've obviously never been to the Wally World near my house....I rarely shop there, but when I do, it's REALLY difficult to find someone on the sales floor to help you.
 
Not so good for Target but, a plus for my bank account is that my wife spends less time shopping in Target now because, the shelves are empty and a mess all the time. And now as a shopper and not a team member I notice more and more what garbage dumb the one spot stuff up front looks like. I was just so used to it while working their I never noticed what a terrible impression it makes walking in the door.

Ours is terrible! Any ideas on how to make it look better? We never seem to have enough people at the front end to pull someone off to fix it, and we always have an overflowing basket of reshop sitting at guest service. Our STL did a smart huddle there a couple weeks ago and it looked decent for about a day.
 
Not so good for Target but, a plus for my bank account is that my wife spends less time shopping in Target now because, the shelves are empty and a mess all the time. And now as a shopper and not a team member I notice more and more what garbage dumb the one spot stuff up front looks like. I was just so used to it while working their I never noticed what a terrible impression it makes walking in the door.

Ours is terrible! Any ideas on how to make it look better? We never seem to have enough people at the front end to pull someone off to fix it, and we always have an overflowing basket of reshop sitting at guest service. Our STL did a smart huddle there a couple weeks ago and it looked decent for about a day.

At my store, our one spot is clean, well stocked, & zoned everyday by the front end. They do the same thing on the endcaps & check lanes too.
 
If Target had been in charge of WWII

  • They would have had ONE boat for D-Day; after all they can just use again and again. Thus D-Day would have launched two years earlier and still ongoing to this day. Germans would to be too stupefied to respond.
  • Civilians would have had their hours cut in the factories to save on expenses.
  • Ships would have had their ammo cut to 3%... "You keep wasting ammo by missing!" and the savings would have been applied to their bonuses.
  • If soldiers on the front line were taking a beating then their supplies would be cut because you cannot reward failure.
  • Soldiers would have been required to swim along the ships to save on fuel.
  • The Atlantic Battle would have played out exactly as it had.
  • Tanks would have been loaded up on the inside with fuel so they could take care of it themselves.
  • The US Army Air force would have been required to use only one bomb per raid, after all, with so many different bombers the target should have been hit!
  • All soldiers over the age of 30 would be retired in suspicious circumstances because only the new ones have the ability to fight.
 
"Retailers consider labor -- usually their largest controllable expense -- an easy cost-cutting target, Ton said. That’s what happened at Home Depot Inc. (HD) in the early 2000s, when Robert Nardelli, then chief executive officer, cut staffing levels and increased the percentage of part-time workers to trim expenses and boost profit. Eventually, customer service and customer satisfaction deteriorated and same-store sales growth dropped, Ton said.
‘Too Expensive’
“When you tell retailers they have to invest in people, the typical response is: ‘It’s just too expensive,’” Ton said."
 
I just saw this article on yahoo. It does sound a lot like target except for the part about long checkout lines. The front end is always calling up the entire sales floor team, leaving nobody to assist guests.
 
Exactly..... Cut hrs you do not have enough bodies lines out the wazoo so people jump on lanes meanwhile people need help on the floor looking for something annoyed they leave because guess what no one is around to help them. So much for CIYHFS......
 
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