Walmart observations

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
storewanderer
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: April 24th, 2021, 2:12 am Walmart is getting rid of their automated Pick Up towers. Apparently customers do not want to come into the stores due to the pandemic. Now they want parking lot pick up.

Many of the towers are now turned off. Some stores now have an area of refrigerators for employees to store grocery pick up items. This seems very labor intensive. You have Walmart employees running around acting as personal shoppers and then they deliver the merchandise or groceries to your car at no extra cost.

This is a money losing process. You also lose out on impulse buying. Most sales are spur of the moment impulse buys. Previously people would fill an entire cart full of impulse buys, but now they just buy a few items and leave it at that.
I was able to use the pick up tower one time. I thought it was quite neat. Until the box I walked through the exit with caused the security alarm to go off. They did confirm it was something in the box, said they did not need to open the box up, and then let me out, but it was still not great.
wnetmacman
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by wnetmacman »

Alpha8472 wrote: April 24th, 2021, 2:12 am Walmart is getting rid of their automated Pick Up towers. Apparently customers do not want to come into the stores due to the pandemic. Now they want parking lot pick up.

Many of the towers are now turned off. Some stores now have an area of refrigerators for employees to store grocery pick up items. This seems very labor intensive. You have Walmart employees running around acting as personal shoppers and then they deliver the merchandise or groceries to your car at no extra cost.

This is a money losing process. You also lose out on impulse buying. Most sales are spur of the moment impulse buys. Previously people would fill an entire cart full of impulse buys, but now they just buy a few items and leave it at that.
The automated towers were not 'ready for prime-time'. They were buggy and took too much space in an area of the store that has little to spare.

Online Grocery Pickup, however, is quite popular. Walmart takes employees that would have been otherwise running registers and runs them through the store picking groceries. They push their way down crowded aisles with an oversized cart that often blocks the way to pick.

It isn't a money losing process. It keeps folks out of the store, but Walmart has added things to the app that keep the impulse buyer's attention. (suggested purchases, anyone?)
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

wnetmacman wrote: April 27th, 2021, 9:28 am
The automated towers were not 'ready for prime-time'. They were buggy and took too much space in an area of the store that has little to spare.

Online Grocery Pickup, however, is quite popular. Walmart takes employees that would have been otherwise running registers and runs them through the store picking groceries. They push their way down crowded aisles with an oversized cart that often blocks the way to pick.

It isn't a money losing process. It keeps folks out of the store, but Walmart has added things to the app that keep the impulse buyer's attention. (suggested purchases, anyone?)
The one thing the pick up tower did accomplish was getting the pick up location closer to the front of the store, in stores that previously had the pick up in the back in the old Layaway space. I wonder if the pick up will revert back to that location... They need to figure out how to get the pick up area closer to the front of the store. Using the "customer service" counter is not the answer; the Wal Mart "customer service" counter is not a pleasant location. I recently had my once or twice a year trip to the "customer service" counter at Wal Mart and frankly it makes me not too eager to even go in there and shop again.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by mbz321 »

Alpha8472 wrote: April 24th, 2021, 2:12 am Walmart is getting rid of their automated Pick Up towers. Apparently customers do not want to come into the stores due to the pandemic. Now they want parking lot pick up.
Strangely enough, a few Walmart locations near me have added these in very recently, like a few months ago recent, but I have yet to see them in operation. What a waste, it seems like it would work out great for small items, but I've never seen it in action. It would be great at my one local WM which has pickup in the back of the store (opened right before Layaway was killed off).
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by Alpha8472 »

I tried the Pickup Tower several times. I scanned my phone and in seconds the door opened up and a plastic bag or box was presented to me. If something goes wrong or if the item is too large, then an employee will be called and they will have to retrieve the item from a storage locker. However, the tower can only hold a limited number of items. I actually made an order and my item was ready for pickup in one of the towers when rioters stormed the store and burned it. The store was closed for months. I did get an automated refund.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by buckguy »

It looks like Walmart has problems on a couple of fronts--groceries and its online service: https://www.vox.com/recode/22423706/wal ... -instacart
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

buckguy wrote: May 7th, 2021, 3:28 pm It looks like Walmart has problems on a couple of fronts--groceries and its online service: https://www.vox.com/recode/22423706/wal ... -instacart
Wal Mart is already doing things to address improved execution on the grocery front. I am not sure it is working. They increased starting pay for all employees working in fresh departments to $16/hr or something. This is higher than most grocers start those positions at. So far I am seeing no improvements. The stores that looked like crap before, still look like crap. The stores that looked good before, still look good.

Another thing I notice is the pricing on meat and produce at Wal Mart (and bakery/deli) is not great. It is higher than Smiths across the board (not even considering sale items). I went to one Wal Mart where they had some good salad mix prices, $1.50/bag for the romaine blends, butter lettuce, etc. I thought this was the everyday price since this is Wal Mart and the tags all were just regular price tags. Went to a different Wal Mart and these were all 2.98, barely better than a normal high price store like Raleys.

Where Wal Mart needs to get control is over its shelf restocking process. Stores have pallets and pallets in the store not getting stocked efficiently. This is because they are using all the stocking labor to fulfill online grocery pick up orders... they are advertising 2 PM to 10 PM stocker shifts at $16/hr full time with benefits here in Nevada. Does not look like they have many takers. Wal Mart has some of the best logistics systems in retail but if the human isn't there to stock the shelf in the store the entire system may as well just be broken.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by Alpha8472 »

Walmart corporate is the one limiting employee work hours. The corporate office is so stingy that they let the computer schedule what employees are working at any time. That makes the store completely shorthanded and the corporate office tells managers not to change the schedule or add extra employees.

Walmart needs to understand that understaffing and preventing managers from changing the computerized schedule to add more employees is what will cause Walmart to lose sales. The shelves are not stocked because of a lack of employees at that time of the day.

The company will ultimately lose business to other stores due to Walmart's unwavering obsession about letting a computer schedule as little labor as possible.
Last edited by Alpha8472 on May 7th, 2021, 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by rwsandiego »

Walmart is going down the same path as Sears and K-Mart did back in their respective days. It will take a while, but it won't end well.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by babs »

rwsandiego wrote: May 7th, 2021, 7:51 pm Walmart is going down the same path as Sears and K-Mart did back in their respective days. It will take a while, but it won't end well.
Walmart is a mess. They have massive stock outages. Just last week I was there and there wasn't a single gallon of milk. You can't be taken seriously if you can't keep a staple like milk in stock. The store in my neck of the woods is across the street from a WinCo that is well stocked and has lower prices.

The reason I think Walmart will survive unlike Kmart is because none of the big national retailers can figure out how to market to lower income folks. It's a huge market that Kroger, Target, Amazon, and many others fail to understand. Another Kmart or Walmart would need to come around to knock down Walmart and I just see that retailer out there today.
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