Author: Nate

How does the number-one retailer maintain an image of low prices? First, by actually making sure its prices are lower than its competitors, at least on key items. These items are called “price-sensitive” items in the industry, and it is commonly believed that the average consumer knows the “going price” of fewer than 100 items. These tend to be commodities that are purchased frequently.
A mid-size Wal-Mart supercenter may offer for sale 100,000 separate items, or stock-keeping units (skus). Wal-Mart and other major retailers believe that the general public knows the going price of only 1 to 2 percent of these items. Therefore, each Wal-Mart store shops for the prices of only about 1,500 items in their competitors’ stores. If it is ever found that a competitor has a lower price on one of these items than Wal-Mart, the store manager will immediately lower his or her price to be the lowest in the area.

Price-sensitive merchandise is displayed in prominent places such as the kiosk at the entrance to the store, as well as on end caps, in dump bins, and in gondolas down the main aisles. Consequently, when Wal-Mart customers see the items of which they know the price, the ones always priced lower in Wal-Mart, they start assuming that everything else is also priced lower than at competing stores. This assumption is simply not true.

My barber has offered me a simple example. He sells a nonbreakable pocket comb for 25 cents that he procures from his vendor for eight cents. Wal-Mart sells a lower-quality comb for 98 cents, and one would assume that Wal-Mart pays less for it than the barber does. People keep buying Wal-Mart combs, however, because the average person does not know the going price of a pocket comb, and it is automatically assumed that the Wal-Mart price is the lowest.

Via MyDD

From AMERICAblog:

Has Jeff Gannon told Peter Fitzgerald all he knows about the Plame affair? If you’d like to “spread the word” on the Gannon story to help encourage the Prosecutor’s office to give Jeff a call, put a link to it on your Web site.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html

The more links, the more likely Google is to pick it up in their Google News. The more news coverage of this story, the closer we are to getting to the bottom of the Plame crime.

Note also warning regarding the linked article:

WARNING: A number of the links in this story are to x-rated photographs, and some of those might prove shocking to some people. Please exercise your own discretion when clicking. (And, as you read, please forgive the necessary typos – I’m going for rock-solid facts, rather than spelling.)