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Discount to discontent at Wal-Mart
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"Do not Cross" banner in Wal-Mart
If you read my article a month ago about Wal-Mart and their Electronic Department expanding you would have at least been prepared before you went there.
Since that article, I have been to Wal-Mart several times and have become more aggravated each time. What was suppose to take under a week has turned into a day short of a month. Is this the way that you run a business?
Normally not. The chance of loosing customers or worse yet, keeping them away during the construction, keeps many business' from doing that. But, Wal-Mart can do pretty much anything they want except raise prices and customers will tolerate it.
Yesterday, I ran in the back door to the Garden Department to go to the bicycle section that was right next to it. I saw that it had a huge tarp over the area and I was told I couldn't go through that way. I went back out the Garden Door and hoofed it to the main door. I walked back through the store, dodging people and shopping carts to get back to the bicycle area. Once there I found that they no longer were carrying the bicycle accessories. I had wasted 15 minutes of my time, gotten annoyed by the long walk, although countered by the thought of the beneficial exercise I was getting, to find out they either were not carrying those items anymore or in the midst of the rearranging the store had not stocked them yet. As screwed up as the store is right now, who can tell. Top it off, there was no reason for the immense tarp separating the two areas. No construction, no construction workers, no sense.
I have been in the store 4 times since they began the "expanding" and my feeling of being lost (all the merchandise has been moved) has accelerated to frustration.
It reminded me of a job I worked at many years ago. To improve productivity they decided that the second floor Accounting Dept. on the west side should move to the second floor east side and vice versa, so the accounting Dept. would be closer to the Personnel Dept. I couldn't see any benefit for all that money the company was spending on movers, but the upper management wouldn't have spent all that money it they didn't know for sure that it would gain them more sales, right? In the end, we lost several days of productivity as we tried to find things that we had lost in the move and adjust to our new surroundings. Frankly, the only productively I personally gained was not having to walk as far to get to the second floor xerox machine.
Employees, human beings in general, like routine and any interruption can create discontent. As I walk through Wal-Mart I hear a lot of discontented comments. Employees are complaining about how they can't even find anything. How they are tired from all the moving and frustrated with being disorganized. Customers sidle up to me to confess they don't know where anything is. Some ask if I have seen paper plates or what happened to the Shoe Dept. Once where I enjoyed wandering around the store buying stuff I never knew I needed, has been traded in for I can't wait to get out of there, and recently to, do I even have to go in there in the first place.
After all the moving around I wonder if Wal-Mart's profits will be higher. I'm sure the upper management thinks they will or they would not have started this expensive reconstruction in the first place. But, one thing they can't factor in is human nature. Will Wal-Mart's customers remain loyal and profits will rise after the reconstruction? Probably not. I think customer's were happy just the way it was. If they had to walk 25 feet instead of 50 feet (or vice versa) to get to the Shoe Dept. they will still spend just as much as they ever did. And what about all the electronic sales that Wal-Mart is hoping to grab from the now defunct Circuit City? I think that Wal-Mart will only be able to do that if they can offer cheaper prices than Best Buy, Fry's and online stores.
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