I have done some comparison shopping and find that the prices ARE cheaper in the new super Walmart that opened on 163rd St. And, since the store practically offers every possible consumer item, it is one stop shopping although you have to walk miles of store from one end to the other. What you end up with are more packages than you expected but your trip to Publix can be cancelled – or they will have one or two items on your list that Walmart still has yet to add.
Have the local businesses that would compete with the big store gone given up? Well, yes and no according to John Tierney who wrote today in the NYTimes about the invasion of the Vietnamese manicurists. Going to Walmart is a little out of our way while Publix is just about across the street. With gas prices being what they are, staying near to home makes more sense than looking for the cents off prices in the cut-rate store.
But, Mr. Thuc who operates a manicurist shop for less and gets his customers out faster than the “American” ones, faces a cultural abyss that includes two main obstacles to the success of the Vietnamese. One is the cultural one where the American ladies like to yak with someone who can yak back. The other is that terrible smell of acrylics that drive away customers, among them my wife with the sensitive nose and asthma.
The point of this essay and, I guess, the point of big blockbuster stores like Walmart and the new little shops of foreign run manicurists is that while they do drive other businesses (out) they drive them to be more flexible and into areas where they can succeed for they have the ability and drive to pick up the pieces, regroup and try something else no one else thought of.
That is the point of competition after all, is it not? For many years in this country the socialist idea of competition among small businesses being good for America held sway. Picturing the monopolies and international cartels as un-American was rampant in those days and efforts to even the playing field for the small guy was seen as good for all.
Times do change. We have both the super-behemoths of merchandisers and many new hand-labor intensive businesses. Both seem to fit the American scene. While I still will not cross a picket line, I will buy for less. In the end I think it will all even out for there is a constant ebb and flow of popularity of businesses that go in and out of business and there is a continuity of what is the same as before.