WAL-MART NATION
Today we are starting our fourth year here in Sicily, in this familiar-but-totally-different culture. It is kind of like New Years for me, as I look back on the anniversary of our arrival and reflect on all that we have done and seen and learned. For three years we have explored our new homeland and tried to understand things about Sicily that are different from our US experiences. In doing this we feel almost like amateur anthropologists. We have furthered this study by also visiting other parts of Europe, and even a little of Asia and Africa (bits of Tunisia and Turkey)!
We increasingly find that we are now distanced enough from the US to see some trends that it might not be possible for others to see from close up. Just the difference in viewpoint in the news is instructive. Also, how can we explain the changes we see when we return to the US? For example, there is the little matter of hair clips.
Our US trips twice a year have begun to follow a particular pattern that we are becoming comfortable with. We always plan our winter trips to include a visit in Mexico (hey, it gets cold in Italy too!) and our summer trip will involve reunions and doctors and dentists visits. We always will try to see as many friends and relatives as possible and we usually have very few days in which there is any free time in the schedule of things planned. We try to squeeze in museums and art shows, magazine, music and book collecting when we get a chance between visiting, traveling, and shopping. Shopping is important because there are still plenty of products that we have only found in the good ol US, so lists of items to bring back are started months ahead of time before a trip. On that list this time was hair clips.
Since my hair is longer I have needed something to keep it off of my neck in the heat. I have been shopping for hair clips since this spring and so far Ive only seen one that I like better than the ones I bought in Tuscany this summer. We cover a good part of the Northeast zigzagging between Boston, where we land and take off for Italy, and Dunkirk, where our semi-permanent temporary home is, and we rent cars where needed and visit family and friends and shop along the way. So I began to wonder why this was so, why the shortage of a variety of different hair clips? I had seen quite a few beautiful but more expensive varieties in Italy. Surely there was a reason why there are not more types to choose from in the US, land of unlimited shopping. It seems like there should be a bigger variety among all of the stores we walked into in a month.
But there was not. The reason for this is that in the areas of Vermont, New York, and Massachusetts that we cover, there are only a handful of different stores that we have to choose from. We must have been in twenty or thirty different stores. But most of them were really the same store. In this northeast corridor, CVS and Eckert seem to be the only drug stores left, and they seem to have caused to disappear Kinneys, Brooks, and other independent drug stores. And hair clips? They sell the same ones no matter where or which drug store we tried. It must be some kind of drug store hair marketing package. Gross!
And of course the ubiquitous WAL-MART and Target. I do like Penneys and Kaufmans and Jones of New York outlet for clothes. But in place of the variety department stores we used to go to for all the little things, there is just not much choice anymore. Even grocery stores are becoming huge. Tops changing into Martins is tripling its space in Dunkirk (their hair clips were non-existent). And to give them competition, WAL-MART will open a superstore with a grocery section. At least there will be more than one possibility to shop in my hometown. Many areas only have WAL-MART, with its policy of lowest prices, to shop in.
Speaking of WAL-MARTs prices- will they continue to be the lowest possible when the competition from all other stores is gone? Honestly, I dont know. But logically-why should they? If this Arkansas phenomenon continues to evolve into the only place to shop for most Americans, why should they work harder to keep their prices the lowest? This is not in the interest of a business that has had the power to eliminate all other comparable stores so that they are the only real alternative. It seems just common sense that they will eventually charge whatever they feel like for all their products.
But even now I dont think WAL-MARTS price policy is good for everybody all of the time. While it may seem that the idea of the lowest price guarantee is a good thing because we are all of us consumers, what about the producers that cannot sell their goods for the price that WAL-MART dictates to be the lowest possible? Why, they go out of business, of course. With the volume of sales this store has all over the country, it is impossible to compete effectively or even to stay in business unless you have a contract or sub-contract with the biggest goods supplier in most areas. WAL-MART is such a giant that most other markets do not even come close to their size or to give them real competition.
We saw this one illustrated one night on TV while in the states when we caught one of a series of programs dedicated to WAL-MARTS effect on American culture. If you get a chance to see it, watch it, though I did not catch the programs name. The show described this phenomenon by following a couple of would-be entrepreneurs and their struggle to land a deal with WAL-MART to handle their product. Following this couple, the documentary camera men showed the process of selection that thousands of people go through to win the privilege of becoming WAL-MART suppliers. There is this surreal building at WAL-MART headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, where people go to pitch their ideas to executives who will decide if they want the product for the price the supplier can deliver it for. Dozens of rooms were shown with different products being pitched, and the mood is seriously somber. A contract with this super consumer can make or break a product producer. Later parts of this program showed a manufacturer who could not deliver product for the bottom line price and soon lost the WAL-MART contract and subsequently went out of business.
But that is the name of the game in Capitalism. If a locally produced product is more cheaply made when manufactured in Bangladesh and sold in WAL-MART, than it follows that its better for everyone that it be produced there and to close down the factory down the street. Its silly to feel sorry for a loser, and all that. EVERYONE is a consumer of some sort, so the good of the many (lower prices) is more important than the misfortune (not being able to produce a product for lower prices) of the few. Or that is what we good capitalist Americans have had ingrained in us for as far back as we can remember. Remember the workers who lose their jobs in non-competitive company closures are consumers too! It is conceivable that some of these businesses went under for offering more money and benefits to these now-unemployed workers than the producers who came out on the top of the heap. Thats capitalism, baby!
Contrary to these long held beliefs is the newer concept, popular since the NAFTA treaty caused so many American jobs to disappear, that Americans consumers should pay a higher price and buy locally made products instead of products that are produced for lower prices but that take jobs away from American workers. This part of the No Global idea is gaining acceptance by all kinds of people, not just those fed up with the results of American capitalism. This concept stands in direct contrast to what was thought previously, that is, the process that produces the lowest priced products is the one that should succeed. So WAL-MART pledged to sell only US made products. Today does it still say it only sells items US produced? Wait, let me go check my labels right now.
Well, just as I thought-impossible in this day and age. My Hanes products were just plain made in Mexico. The Faded Glory brand jeans were made in the US with foreign components. One bra was made in Israel, one assembled in Honduras. The claim to sell only US-made is not true, but I seem to remember a claim to TRY to sell only US products. There may truly be an effort there because all of my vitamins and drugs are produced in the US. But honestly, the reason I buy these things and bring them back here is because I cannot buy these particular products in Europe!
Truly though, I am an American consumer. Among other things (like buying too much of everything!) I like to look for just the right thing at just the right cost. Steve is the same and he really loves the challenge of food shopping here. It took us awhile to adapt our shopping needs to the small business atmosphere here in Sciacca, but we have become accustomed to the allure of personalized service, and quality products at specialized stores. We know we may pay for it at times, but when you buy bread at a bakery that smells fresh and yeasty, and you watch the butcher prepare the sausage for you from the cuts of meat that you choose and add the just the right spices (never as much fennel and rosemary as Sicilians like), you expect to pay more. Hair clips? We can find them here only because we have learned with time to look in just the right places for most products. But there are very few stores that are self service and salespeople hover over you, sometimes trying to sell you something that is not exactly what you want. Besides, the stock is not always out in front of you and so Sicilians shop more verbally than visually, discussing endlessly the pros and cons of one product over another fetched from bins above or below displays. I just dont have the verbal skills for that yet. The atmosphere is usually not a relaxing browse as in the US.
In fact I dont go shopping here in Sicily at all unless for a special reason. People dont believe me when I tell them that I dont want to go shopping, that it is a waste of time because I dont need anything. Now that is not very American, since so many of us were raised on consuming items and shopping for more as a form of recreation. From the times kids are small and their moms push them around the malls, to the teen mall and movie trips, to oldsters walking malls for exercise and meeting family and friends for coffee, the shopping experience is part of the American experience. And here I am in retirement rejecting this type of entertainment here in Europe. Maybe it is because there is no real feel of entertainment when you shop here. Mostly there are only specialty shops and real work to find out where you can buy a product that you need. The only browsing with variety is in the weekly outdoor markets, which are confusing and crowded and filled with colorful salesmen yelling prices and bargains. I can take that once every month or so, but more for entertainment than for the range of products available. Most of the stuff is cheap and aimed at impulse buying by uninformed consumers.
In fact, I believe, like most Americans, that the broadest range of products in a store makes that store the most desirable and entertaining. Bingo! WAL-MART feeds that instinct to comparison shop and buy everything you need in one stop. Ergo its popularity even if its prices werent the lowest. And since we are usually short of time when we are in the states, you know that we take way too many trips to the Big W. I had way too many product tags to check!
Increasingly when in the US, we have tried to shop the Big T as an alternative. But I think the idea there is pretty much the same, that of the forcing out of business smaller stores because of the success of the huge ones. I wish I could stop myself from shopping there, but I am as addicted as any other American at this point to all the allures of the shopping giants: need, perceived or otherwise; entertainment value; dollar value; and decreased time spent shopping (those new self check-outs are really nifty!).
Now, finally, back to the hair clips. I am lucky enough to have all kinds of choices. I can shop in the US or in Italy and often in France, Spain, Austria, etc, or at least their airports. So I get to see a variety of products at different prices. And it is true that WAL-MART often has much lower prices than anywhere else in the world, even Paris during its January sales! But it is also true that there is a standardization of products that occurs when a consumer monopoly is this successful. And so I saw the same dreary looking hair clips at each WAL-MARTS and not a hint of variety of any kind. Experts in marketing must realize they have to give you some choices to make you happy, and so there were a few to choose from. But they were honestly boring and pretty much all alike.
So the famous Bentonville system failed me in one product. And in most towns there are now few shopping options available other than settling for the product that has been chosen by the national to be sold there. I cant help but wonder if the danger of standardization and availability of products is being at all considered in the US. This makes me also think that we are only a short time away from not having a choice but to pay the prices that are put on an item at WAL-MART. If I am wrong in that thinking, someone help me out here.
Just as I cannot buy those beautiful, soft leather, expensive Italian shoes because my size is not available anywhere here, will people in the US find that items previously considered necessities wont be available anymore? And at what price will they be forced to pay?
Now you know one of the other reasons why I dont shop in Sicily-the size frustration is just too much for me. But WAL-MART almost always has my size, and in most cases, there is a choice of different styles. And really, who needs more than one hair clip when I only wear one at a time? I think I am my own worst enemy sometimes. What about you?
We increasingly find that we are now distanced enough from the US to see some trends that it might not be possible for others to see from close up. Just the difference in viewpoint in the news is instructive. Also, how can we explain the changes we see when we return to the US? For example, there is the little matter of hair clips.
Our US trips twice a year have begun to follow a particular pattern that we are becoming comfortable with. We always plan our winter trips to include a visit in Mexico (hey, it gets cold in Italy too!) and our summer trip will involve reunions and doctors and dentists visits. We always will try to see as many friends and relatives as possible and we usually have very few days in which there is any free time in the schedule of things planned. We try to squeeze in museums and art shows, magazine, music and book collecting when we get a chance between visiting, traveling, and shopping. Shopping is important because there are still plenty of products that we have only found in the good ol US, so lists of items to bring back are started months ahead of time before a trip. On that list this time was hair clips.
Since my hair is longer I have needed something to keep it off of my neck in the heat. I have been shopping for hair clips since this spring and so far Ive only seen one that I like better than the ones I bought in Tuscany this summer. We cover a good part of the Northeast zigzagging between Boston, where we land and take off for Italy, and Dunkirk, where our semi-permanent temporary home is, and we rent cars where needed and visit family and friends and shop along the way. So I began to wonder why this was so, why the shortage of a variety of different hair clips? I had seen quite a few beautiful but more expensive varieties in Italy. Surely there was a reason why there are not more types to choose from in the US, land of unlimited shopping. It seems like there should be a bigger variety among all of the stores we walked into in a month.
But there was not. The reason for this is that in the areas of Vermont, New York, and Massachusetts that we cover, there are only a handful of different stores that we have to choose from. We must have been in twenty or thirty different stores. But most of them were really the same store. In this northeast corridor, CVS and Eckert seem to be the only drug stores left, and they seem to have caused to disappear Kinneys, Brooks, and other independent drug stores. And hair clips? They sell the same ones no matter where or which drug store we tried. It must be some kind of drug store hair marketing package. Gross!
And of course the ubiquitous WAL-MART and Target. I do like Penneys and Kaufmans and Jones of New York outlet for clothes. But in place of the variety department stores we used to go to for all the little things, there is just not much choice anymore. Even grocery stores are becoming huge. Tops changing into Martins is tripling its space in Dunkirk (their hair clips were non-existent). And to give them competition, WAL-MART will open a superstore with a grocery section. At least there will be more than one possibility to shop in my hometown. Many areas only have WAL-MART, with its policy of lowest prices, to shop in.
Speaking of WAL-MARTs prices- will they continue to be the lowest possible when the competition from all other stores is gone? Honestly, I dont know. But logically-why should they? If this Arkansas phenomenon continues to evolve into the only place to shop for most Americans, why should they work harder to keep their prices the lowest? This is not in the interest of a business that has had the power to eliminate all other comparable stores so that they are the only real alternative. It seems just common sense that they will eventually charge whatever they feel like for all their products.
But even now I dont think WAL-MARTS price policy is good for everybody all of the time. While it may seem that the idea of the lowest price guarantee is a good thing because we are all of us consumers, what about the producers that cannot sell their goods for the price that WAL-MART dictates to be the lowest possible? Why, they go out of business, of course. With the volume of sales this store has all over the country, it is impossible to compete effectively or even to stay in business unless you have a contract or sub-contract with the biggest goods supplier in most areas. WAL-MART is such a giant that most other markets do not even come close to their size or to give them real competition.
We saw this one illustrated one night on TV while in the states when we caught one of a series of programs dedicated to WAL-MARTS effect on American culture. If you get a chance to see it, watch it, though I did not catch the programs name. The show described this phenomenon by following a couple of would-be entrepreneurs and their struggle to land a deal with WAL-MART to handle their product. Following this couple, the documentary camera men showed the process of selection that thousands of people go through to win the privilege of becoming WAL-MART suppliers. There is this surreal building at WAL-MART headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, where people go to pitch their ideas to executives who will decide if they want the product for the price the supplier can deliver it for. Dozens of rooms were shown with different products being pitched, and the mood is seriously somber. A contract with this super consumer can make or break a product producer. Later parts of this program showed a manufacturer who could not deliver product for the bottom line price and soon lost the WAL-MART contract and subsequently went out of business.
But that is the name of the game in Capitalism. If a locally produced product is more cheaply made when manufactured in Bangladesh and sold in WAL-MART, than it follows that its better for everyone that it be produced there and to close down the factory down the street. Its silly to feel sorry for a loser, and all that. EVERYONE is a consumer of some sort, so the good of the many (lower prices) is more important than the misfortune (not being able to produce a product for lower prices) of the few. Or that is what we good capitalist Americans have had ingrained in us for as far back as we can remember. Remember the workers who lose their jobs in non-competitive company closures are consumers too! It is conceivable that some of these businesses went under for offering more money and benefits to these now-unemployed workers than the producers who came out on the top of the heap. Thats capitalism, baby!
Contrary to these long held beliefs is the newer concept, popular since the NAFTA treaty caused so many American jobs to disappear, that Americans consumers should pay a higher price and buy locally made products instead of products that are produced for lower prices but that take jobs away from American workers. This part of the No Global idea is gaining acceptance by all kinds of people, not just those fed up with the results of American capitalism. This concept stands in direct contrast to what was thought previously, that is, the process that produces the lowest priced products is the one that should succeed. So WAL-MART pledged to sell only US made products. Today does it still say it only sells items US produced? Wait, let me go check my labels right now.
Well, just as I thought-impossible in this day and age. My Hanes products were just plain made in Mexico. The Faded Glory brand jeans were made in the US with foreign components. One bra was made in Israel, one assembled in Honduras. The claim to sell only US-made is not true, but I seem to remember a claim to TRY to sell only US products. There may truly be an effort there because all of my vitamins and drugs are produced in the US. But honestly, the reason I buy these things and bring them back here is because I cannot buy these particular products in Europe!
Truly though, I am an American consumer. Among other things (like buying too much of everything!) I like to look for just the right thing at just the right cost. Steve is the same and he really loves the challenge of food shopping here. It took us awhile to adapt our shopping needs to the small business atmosphere here in Sciacca, but we have become accustomed to the allure of personalized service, and quality products at specialized stores. We know we may pay for it at times, but when you buy bread at a bakery that smells fresh and yeasty, and you watch the butcher prepare the sausage for you from the cuts of meat that you choose and add the just the right spices (never as much fennel and rosemary as Sicilians like), you expect to pay more. Hair clips? We can find them here only because we have learned with time to look in just the right places for most products. But there are very few stores that are self service and salespeople hover over you, sometimes trying to sell you something that is not exactly what you want. Besides, the stock is not always out in front of you and so Sicilians shop more verbally than visually, discussing endlessly the pros and cons of one product over another fetched from bins above or below displays. I just dont have the verbal skills for that yet. The atmosphere is usually not a relaxing browse as in the US.
In fact I dont go shopping here in Sicily at all unless for a special reason. People dont believe me when I tell them that I dont want to go shopping, that it is a waste of time because I dont need anything. Now that is not very American, since so many of us were raised on consuming items and shopping for more as a form of recreation. From the times kids are small and their moms push them around the malls, to the teen mall and movie trips, to oldsters walking malls for exercise and meeting family and friends for coffee, the shopping experience is part of the American experience. And here I am in retirement rejecting this type of entertainment here in Europe. Maybe it is because there is no real feel of entertainment when you shop here. Mostly there are only specialty shops and real work to find out where you can buy a product that you need. The only browsing with variety is in the weekly outdoor markets, which are confusing and crowded and filled with colorful salesmen yelling prices and bargains. I can take that once every month or so, but more for entertainment than for the range of products available. Most of the stuff is cheap and aimed at impulse buying by uninformed consumers.
In fact, I believe, like most Americans, that the broadest range of products in a store makes that store the most desirable and entertaining. Bingo! WAL-MART feeds that instinct to comparison shop and buy everything you need in one stop. Ergo its popularity even if its prices werent the lowest. And since we are usually short of time when we are in the states, you know that we take way too many trips to the Big W. I had way too many product tags to check!
Increasingly when in the US, we have tried to shop the Big T as an alternative. But I think the idea there is pretty much the same, that of the forcing out of business smaller stores because of the success of the huge ones. I wish I could stop myself from shopping there, but I am as addicted as any other American at this point to all the allures of the shopping giants: need, perceived or otherwise; entertainment value; dollar value; and decreased time spent shopping (those new self check-outs are really nifty!).
Now, finally, back to the hair clips. I am lucky enough to have all kinds of choices. I can shop in the US or in Italy and often in France, Spain, Austria, etc, or at least their airports. So I get to see a variety of products at different prices. And it is true that WAL-MART often has much lower prices than anywhere else in the world, even Paris during its January sales! But it is also true that there is a standardization of products that occurs when a consumer monopoly is this successful. And so I saw the same dreary looking hair clips at each WAL-MARTS and not a hint of variety of any kind. Experts in marketing must realize they have to give you some choices to make you happy, and so there were a few to choose from. But they were honestly boring and pretty much all alike.
So the famous Bentonville system failed me in one product. And in most towns there are now few shopping options available other than settling for the product that has been chosen by the national to be sold there. I cant help but wonder if the danger of standardization and availability of products is being at all considered in the US. This makes me also think that we are only a short time away from not having a choice but to pay the prices that are put on an item at WAL-MART. If I am wrong in that thinking, someone help me out here.
Just as I cannot buy those beautiful, soft leather, expensive Italian shoes because my size is not available anywhere here, will people in the US find that items previously considered necessities wont be available anymore? And at what price will they be forced to pay?
Now you know one of the other reasons why I dont shop in Sicily-the size frustration is just too much for me. But WAL-MART almost always has my size, and in most cases, there is a choice of different styles. And really, who needs more than one hair clip when I only wear one at a time? I think I am my own worst enemy sometimes. What about you?
posted by Sicilian Mama at 12:59 PM
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