Interesting thing about Walmart is their relationships with their suppliers. This is based on an interesting series of articles NPR had on a cuple of years ago. Walmart will negotiate an excellent price with a supplier for a year. Then during the next year's they'll tell the supplier to reduce their price by 10 to 15% off their price or Walmart will talk with an off shore firm to do knockoffs of that product. Given the massive market clout of Walmart, I doubt that very many firms can resist.
On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 10:41 PM, Gruss Gott <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Larry wrote: >> >> Um do you mind not talking in word salad? In other words string please >> your words together with semantical meaning and contextual inference >> so us mere mortals may understand. >> > > Sure! > > Companies design product to meet a price point and, in general, the > lower the price point the lower the quality. > > As a quick example, Wal-Mart. > > Everyone knows that most of stuff you buy in Wal-Mart is the cheapie > version of the exact same product from the exact same company. I > remember I bought a bunch of Newell Rubbermaid tubs with locking lids > there once because they were a bargain. Welp, all the lids broke in > 10 seconds. Some quickie research told me that the product number I > bought was 1234-1. The "-1" meant the crap version that's made for > Wally World, because the more expensive version I bought elsewhere > still works great. > > Anyway, the time until failure for a product is typically called "mean > time to failure" or the average time the average item will take to > fail. > > The lady in the video suggests that companies might decided to make > this very low so that people have to keep re-buying the same products. > > Well, let's take my tire example again. I could buy the Chinese tires > that have a low mean-time-to-failure or I can buy the Nokians. The > Nokians have a 50,000 mile warranty. > > Wait! A warranty! > > A warranty is a company's promise to you of the quality of their product. > > Ok, so wait - what about the conspiracy lady? > > Well, let's say Nokian decides to purposely make crappy tires. > They'll be out of business in a heatbeat. Do you know why? > > Because I could secure $50,000,000 in a bank account tomorrow morning > from VCs and PEGs to start a new company to steal all of their > customers. > > Products fail. Companies even purposely design their products to fail > as part of the "purchase bargain". That's not a conspiracy, that's > just smart business. > > So anybody that believes it's some big conspiracy PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE > just give me one example. > > I'll prove you wrong and make me rich at that same time. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:308265 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
