Pull Market

[talon]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6294RP20100310

This, among many other reasons, is why I rarely shop Wal-Mart. I guess the bulk of the things I buy fall under the "slower selling" items. Diced canned carrots is the primary form of canned carrot I'll buy and Wal-Mart used to be the only place to find it, and now - well, they don't carry it. For holidays, I'd also buy the canned julienned carrots (and julienned beets) but Wal-Mart no longer carries those, either.

Other items they don't carry that I used to buy: a particular brand of cat litter, Itzl's dog food (now I buy it on line but I originally bought it at Wal-Mart), Typhoo tea, Leonardo's pasta, Hunt's petit diced tomatoes, packs of 36 eggs (they still sell them, but now they're packaged so you can't check to see if any eggs are broken and I won't buy eggs if I can't do that), almond milk, Maggi seasoning cubes, Tasty Cakes baked goods, and so on. There's probably 30 things I used to buy only at Wal-Mart that I now go to small ethnic markets to get instead. Wal-Mart lost my business because they stopped carrying the things I bought, and so I don't buy the cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, onions, potatoes, kohlrabi, parsnips, celery, peppers, apples, nectarines, milk, cream, butter, or household cleaners there, either.

I don't grocery shop at Wal-Mart anymore because they don't carry the crucial things and the stuff they do carry, I can get anywhere else, so I might as well shop elsewhere.

I knew Wal-Mart was limiting our shopping choices and it annoyed me enough to send me shopping elsewhere.

It's called "pull marketing" where they pull the slow sellers and expect people to buy the best sellers only. In Wal-Mart's case, they are selling less of name brand items and more of their store brand, and I rarely bought their store brand.

I prefer a "push market" where they stock odd and unusual items in the hopes of luring people in to buy those things, and while there, they'd fill the rest of their more usual shopping needs. I'm the person who buys the odd and unusual items and if I start expecting them to be there, I'll shop there regularly. If I can't find them there anymore, then I stop shopping there altogether. It was the offbeat that drew me in, and the lack of the offbeat sends me away.