Are competitors like Amazon and a few others who offer discount prices and free delivery starting to get Wally World's attention? In the past few weeks I've notices their stores in Tennessee and Alabama are undergoing some radical floorplan changes- - - -rearranging displays, and making the aisles MUCH wider between displays. Are they also making some major adjustments in inventory, and widening the aisles to try to hide the downsizing of floor stock?
Jerry

When the average customer weighs 400 pounds and is on a scooter you need wide aisles

This +1

Over the last year, WMT stocks outperformed AMZN, turning in about double the returns.

Amazon has about stopped free shipping but most things ordered through Walmart can be "shipped to store" free.
We have done that several times.

If I had to give an uneducated guess, Dollar General is inflicting the pain to Walmart. Walmart has actually made some gains on Amazon in online retail.

Amazon siphons off plenty of Walmart biz but Dollar General is Walmart's demon.
DG's stock has out preformed Walmart for years..

There are other smaller groceries and dollar stores that are successfully dipping into Walmart's pockets as well.

Having lived in AL and TN, the aisle widening has to be because of the plumpkins that inhabit both states.

This. No need to read further

This would be my guess: That's Smart: See the Tech Helping Us Serve You Better

https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2019/01/15/top-ways-walmart-is-changing-how-customers-shop

^^^^This^^^^

Does amazon take EBT?

Half of their customers make Bigfoot look like Peewee Herman. Go there at 1:00 AM on the night after the Gubmint check roll in!

I would hate to live in a place where my shopping options were Wal Mart or Dollar General. The trade off better be its beautiful country

They just finished the floor rearranging here. Took them over a month to do it and during and after you can't find anything. Isles are blocked so you have to keep changing direction as you shop. Guess that's the plan. Longer they keep you in the store your supposed to buy more.

Wider isles may stem from all the employees using carts shopping for people to pick up outside.

So far in Washington State and parts NY

Bless their hearts.

I've been in Walmart 2 times in the last 6 Months... once because it is the only place that still sells hunting licenses and another time because I needed some office supplies... again only local place to buy those.... IIRC they only offer part time positions to save on payroll costs.... the employees they retained are off the charts bad..... check out lines are a bad joke.

Most stores don't have the boxes of 100 Twinkies its a rip off you be buyin them lil 10 packs

Been hearing more and more complaints from people on the local Walmart's grocery pre-order / pickup service. Some are saying they've been having to wait as long as 20 - 30 minutes sometimes at the pickup location before their order is bought out to them now, also unfilled items and wrong items not even on their order list.

The delivery thing is catching on. Costco's doing it now within certain distances from the store. $35 minimum, free delivery with orders over $75. I haven't compared online prices to store prices to see if they're jacking them up.

+1 on the employees filling grocery carts. It was a major pain. They had the attitude that we were in their way. I'm not in their way anymore. For the last few months its been Meijers or Schnucks.

I know a lot of folks who were liking it real well here too, but like I said, the local Walmart is starting to get less reliable and not all that much of a time saver as it initially was. Personally, I don't believe I'd want some store associate picking out fresh meat or short shelf life items like bakery and dairy products for me. And I would think too that Walmart probably requires order pickers to fill orders with items that have the nearest expiration dates.

And how many options does Southern Ohio have? I live near the river and know the area, so where are they hidden?

Nice thing about living here.
Mostly low middle income to upper low income.
Working people, many on assistance need the supplement
to fill the need of low wages.

People are conservative and frugal, but most aren't trash.
People of Wal-Mart moments are rare.

I honestly think it's an Amazon/DG one-day punch.
Amazon hits their more expensive, "luxury" items.
TV, electronics, things you can wait on.

DG, hits their quick trip, daily items. And, takes the Acess (EBT) card. Better prices, easier in and out.
We have one Wal-Mart in this county. 30 miles in three directions,
more to the East to find another. DG has at least 6. Strategically
placed, most working people will be within a mile or two of one
sometime during the drive home.

I was in the local store last week with a list of 7 items. Only one was in stock.

There is always plenty of “ Big Uns”. In the Walmart in Tomball!

I never shopped at Walmart much but last time I tried was over a year ago and decided never again.

I could barely stomach the place the way it was, if it wasn't the shoppers walking their mutts through the food isles it was their weird employees I let get under my skin.
I was down to hitting the place in the wee hours to avoid most of what I found repulsive and hey, at 4 am the place just wasn't that busy.
I go rollin' in around 4 or 4:30 and find the once 24/7 operation closed. Seems they had new hours, something like 6am to midnight.

Now they must do all that shelf stocking while the isles are filled with people trying to shop. I just never went back after that.

Something is changing there......

For those odd ball items I use to purchase at Walmart, I had to find another resource.
I hit my first Dollar General and was pretty surprised to see how they directly targeted Walmart with their inventory and pricing structure.
They don't carry everything so still needing another resource I stumbled into my first Save-A-Lot grocery.
I found they were doing business much like Dollar General, obviously directly targeting Walmart with inventory and cheaper pricing.

Neither Dollar General or Save-A-Lot are ever crammed with people, never seen a dog walking the food isles at either place and I'd venture to say I spend less on the items I once bought at Walmart now days.

From what I understand about the Save-A-Lot stores, you can have either a really good one or a really bad one, just depends on where you're at.

Yeah, Walmart has some competition out there that is doing fine but I doubt Walmart is going to go under anytime soon.

If they just threw in the towel and quit trying to change in order to keep up with the times they would probably die much like Sears, it's take decade or two before they were to completely fade away.

They've changed their website to be more for online shopping. I used to be able to search for an item and it would tell me which Isle and shelf to find it on. That appears to be gone. It was a big help sometimes to avoid having to find a clerk to find something.

Don't most things ship free with Prime?

It's not 'free' because you pay for Prime, but it is handy. It also gets them a lot of business because people have paid for it and want to get their money's worth.

Dollar General is doing exactly what Wal-Mart did in its early years. Wal-Mart built small stores in smaller communities, stocked the most common items, and sold at every day low prices. They used centralized distribution centers to ensure stable in stock positions and to get items to stores on short notice.

Wal-Mart bought Jet in 2016 thinking they could shape it into Amazon's chief competitor. That hasn't worked out well and Jet is now a niche operation that I don't think will last. Wal-Mart is now focused largely on Wal-Mart online and is using third party (a la Amazon) vendors extensively.

The biggest advantage the Walmart superstores have over their competitors is the convenience of one-stop shopping in a indoor, climate controlled environment for most everyday things typical, average households need or want in groceries, hardware, clothing, automobile supplies, toys, electronics, over the counter health products, pharmacy, eyeglasses, etc., etc., etc., plus immediate, on the spot returns.

I was a Prime member from the day they came up with the idea.
I quit Prime on Amazons last rate hike.

My average Amazon monthly spending has plummeted by about 80% as a result.

I did a lot of needless spending because I was Prime.... if a vendor isn't offering a fair price with free shipping included I don't buy.

Which is exactly why we shop there.

I step into a Wal Mart store about 2x a year. I don't order anything from em on line.

Their sporting goods department is a joke and I would rather support the smaller sporting goods stores locally.

When the first Super Center hit the area 25 years ago 99% of the stuff in it was made in the US, not that way anymore. They would rather sell imported junk at cheaper prices than sell quality merchandise.

They get very little of my money.

Had to go to the Rx in one yesterday for the wifes grandmother's prescriptions other than that it's been about 9 months since I swung in.

Fugg em, non ammo selling pricks.

Bet Ol' Sam is all twisted up in his grave.

Weren’t you the guy that “hadn’t stepped foot in a Walmart in 30 years, blankety blank blah blah blah by God, commies, etc etc” ??

Or was someone from Jerkwater, Idaho?

Wal-Mart Express was an attempt to compete with the dollar stores and it was a complete failure.
They were only around for about five years or so.

Wal-Mart feels the pain these dollar stores are inflicting....

Since Walmart is one of the things that it's popular on the Fire to hate, there are at least 2 or 3 threads like this a year on here. Yet, Walmart keeps on chugging along.

If you don't like them, don't shop there. It's just that simple. But, keep one thing in mind.............you're $11.73 purchase at Dollar General isn't going to hurt Walmart one little bit.

Ummmm, I don’t believe that their milk, butter, deli meat, wonder bread, dog food, Pall Malls, iceberg lettuce, orange juice, Miller lite, cranberry juice, pork n beans, 7-up, ketchup, Vienna sausages, toilet paper, toothpaste, dial soap are made in China

Now, if I’m in there and need a new I-phone charger cable, yeah that probably made in China.


Boo freakin hoo

A long established Save-a-Lot grocery store in a nearby town had to close their doors not long after a new and much bigger Ruler Foods (Kroger owned) discount grocery store opened. The Ruler Foods store keeps their milk priced their at around $1 a gallon, which caused the local Walmart to drop the price of their store brand milk the same. Walmart knows that rarely ever does anyone walk in a grocery store to buy a gallon of milk and leave with just the one gallon of milk.

We shop at the Walmart in grand haven Mi. This is a really nice clean Walmart. Muskegon , and Grand Rapids not so much!

I think it depends on the person that owns the particular store. Ours sold to new owners and was closed within a year.

Aldi is another one that used to be pretty cheap but the wife says they are starting to inch prices up and it's not worth it to drive 15 miles to them vs staying in town and shopping the local Price Chopper.

She mainly buys items on sale to help. Can't always wait for sales on stuff but it does help to shop the weekly sales and stock up.

Don't be so sure about that..

What I believe the reason Dollar General is growing by leaps and bounds is so many privately owned neighborhood and small town 'mom and pop' owned stores couldn't compete price wise with the wholesale buying power of big super stores, nor survive on customers buying just a few incidentals between their major grocery shopping trips to the super stores, therefore had to closed their doors.

Dollar General recognized a opportunity, the potential, jumped on it and it's paying off.

Bingo, if you live in or go to a chithole area to shop, you have much different WM shoppers than if you don't.

Where I work we have Walmart sales people visit yearly and they gave us a presentation about a year ago and asked us who we thought was their biggest competitor was and we all said Dollar General. They said no it was Amazon . That’s back when there was a free shipping war and now that seems to be over with so I would bet DG is getting looked at again. It used to be DG that’s why Walmart countered them and started putting up the small neighborhood stores and I think that didn’t go over well for them.

I do know Walmart has a heck of a turnover of their salespeople.

Walmart will always be able to offer shoppers things that Dollar General can't, and that's why it's highly unlikely that DG will ever make serious inroads into the Walmart market.

Having said that, we have a DG about 5 miles away, and we use it every now and then. From what I've seen, they mostly serve the customer who has run out of a certain item, and goes to the local DG rather than make a longer drive to a place like Walmart. DG's can operate cheaply, because their buildings are small and inexpensive to begin with, their inventory is mostly made up of lower priced items, and they don't have a lot of overhead like the bigger stores like Walmart do.

I wish them all well, as it means the economy is booming when you see stores opening up everywhere.

I doubt if we see any of the Walton family begging on the street corner with a tin cup any time soon.

That would be my guess. As far as all of the discussion about Dollar General, that is just a lower price convenience store for people who don't need to buy much.

DG hasn't found it's way to Idaho yet. We have plenty of Family Dollars, Dollar Trees, and others, though.

We have a DG Market about 2 miles from us. The Market stores have groceries and produce.
Kroger/Walmart and Food Lion are all 2-3 miles and 5-6 stoplights further away.
That DG Market stays very busy.

I think the variety of smaller store alternatives offers people one thing Wal-Mart can never do.
People are more subject to needless impulsive buying at Wal-Mart than in the small stores.

It's a science, they know exactly how to entice you into buying things you never knew you needed and probably don't.
It all adds up at the end of the month....

DG carries a small stock of brand name stuff, and a huge amount of second-tier generics. Their selection is pretty limited, and they obviously pander to the bottom of the food chain, customer-wise. I'm betting a huge amount of their business volume involves EBT, SNAP, and other welfare-type transactions.
Jerry

JeffA must be their best customer, either that, or he's trying to peddle his DG stock.

I only go to Walmart to pick up new fashion trends.

I've grown to appreciate Aldi's lately. Talk about no frills and generic brands but produce , meats and dairy are on point. Better prices than Wal-Mart or DG without the "personalities" of rural america

Some of the regular Dollar General stores located in areas that no longer have any full-line grocery stores nearby are
starting to add fresh produce, fruit and pre-cut, prepackaged fresh meat sections.

Wally is on other side of town.
And it's a redneck burg.

There is a DG much closer.
Gonna clean a rifle, am out of paper towels.

DG it is.

Wally and Meijer same side of town.
Meijer costs a little more.

Cops always at Wally. Fuggin scum o rama.

Actually dislike both stores.
Had a Marsh that had way better Deli back in the day.

Our local Walmart reported they loose nearly $2.5 million per year to theft. Prior to adding self check out the amount was much less.

I bet a lot of things don’t get checked out on the self checkout

No way in hell a man could get run down an kilt. Years back wife and i would stop in to pick up a few items. I checked the "Sporting goods" picked up odds and ends. Since they went anti we avoid the place, little extra running but fugg them.

No schit - that’s funny.

I like DG, in and out, easy peasy

Aisles are narrow so it ain’t too many overweight freaks, no electric carts. Lol
Just skinny meth heads and biker chicks


Beer, milk, Vienna sausages, slim Jims, paydays, code red mtn dew.

me and renegade actually deer hunt directly behind one DG , I swear God

What else does a country boy need?

Walmart is 19 miles, have to go through negro infested areas and 11 red lights. Walmart is a once a month deal.

Glad to hear that Vienna sausages, pork n beans and Miller lite are not made in China.... those items comprise my entire food-group.