
Wal-Mart charges more for some products online than in stores - nopinsight
https://www.wsj.com/articles/now-featured-on-wal-marts-website-higher-prices-1510517219
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WalterBright
Back in college, a friend of mine wanted to buy an expensive SLR camera. He
researched the prices diligently, and found a place in LA with the best price.
So we all piled into his car, and went to buy it.

Once there, he naturally bought a lense, flash, case, carrying strap, film,
filter, etc. Back in the dorm, he ruefully added things up and compared again
and found out he'd paid, in aggregate, top dollar!

An awful lot of analysis and variables go into setting prices, and whether an
item is in-store or online is just one factor.

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Chris2048
> he naturally bought..

Is it not well know that addons have the greatest markup?

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WalterBright
We were kids. And so we learned :-)

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mathattack
Shouldn’t this be ok? Sometimes they want loss leaders for you to come in
person. Also, they may not have 100% accuracy on your location until you check
out. This is no different than having prices change by geography. You wouldn’t
expect to pay the same in Mountain View as you would in Albequerque.

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retailbuyout
> You wouldn’t expect to pay the same in Mountain View as you would in
> Albequerque.

If this isn’t the appeal of walmart, what is?

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mathattack
Low prices, yes. But real estate and labor costs are lower in New Mexico than
California. Perhaps taxes too. So they have different prices by region.
(Otherwise they couldn't be profitable everywhere, and then they lose
economies of scale) Not that different on pricing differences between
countries.

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retailbuyout
Right, but then why buy from walmart if the competitive price is gone (as
shown in the original example of online vs retail price)? If it’s just a
single region agnostic price plus some location sensitive fee, they’re just
another branded ecommerce store beholden to their sellers and distribution for
pricing determination. Amazon wins with price, quality, inventory, and
selection.

~~~
bonestamp2
> Amazon wins with price, quality, inventory, and selection.

Not always... I bought something on Amazon last week and the 3rd party seller
drop shipped it from Sam's Club (wal-mart). I saw the packing slip, looked it
up on samsclub.com and realized I had paid 20%/$4 more at Amazon than they
paid at Sam's Club.

Amazon has a great price on a lot of things, which has taught us to think they
have a great price on everything. Amazon also takes at least one day to get
something to your house. If you need something immediately, that's where
retail wins every time... it doesn't even matter what the price difference is.

~~~
retailbuyout
Right, but we’re discussing walmart.com vs amazon.com because walmart.com
doesn’t have the crazy low prices that the retail store does. You’re
absolutely right you can easily undercut amazon at sam’s club, so (eg) why
can’t walmart.com match that undercut?

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tehlike
Isn't this... obvious?

Experimenting with offline prices and measuring its impact on sales is hard.
Doing it online is very easy. You can even show different prices to different
users and gather information about their shopping throughput.

Thinking that a company's ultimate goal is to increase profits, it's easy to
see why they would want to do this.

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klondike_
This isn't exactly surprising to me. On Amazon especially, some common items
like school supplies are priced way higher than equivalent items in brick and
mortar stores. I always figured it had to do with the cost of shipping and
supply chain logistics.

~~~
leggomylibro
You can look up the costs - and even sign up for the seller programs - really
easily. For small items, it looks like FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) costs $2.50
a pop to handle prime shipping/customer service/returns/etc. And I think you
have to pay for shipping to their warehouses, too. Plus warehouse space, but
that looks very cheap for small volumes at a glance.

So if you see something that costs $5 with multipack options of
3-4/$10...well, there you go.

And you too can make any product available to a huge audience with 2-(ish)-day
shipping...no wonder they're going like gangbusters.

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rgbrenner
I thought everyone knew this... a lot of retail stores do this.. sometimes
it's more expensive in the store than online. I know target and walgreens like
to charge more in the store than online.

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jonlucc
Also, some stores, like Target, will not price-match their own website. The
operations are apparently far enough apart that they won't sell that item on
the same sale schedule or price ever.

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CarVac
I've had them price-match their own website. Your mileage may vary.

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jonlucc
Interesting; this could also be a newer thing. The only time I tried and
failed at two Targets was probably a couple years ago by now.

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ahartmetz
I did this successfully at a completely different store - a Media Markt in
Berlin - using the approach: "Look, I want to buy this and I could order it
online to this store, which would be silly: I have to wait, and you don't make
a sale" in a slightly amused, non-confrontational tone. Now I don't think it
is likely that the result depended on the approach, but inofficial store
policy. Media Markt is expensive except for special offers.

It was about two Logitech gamepads for ~15€ less overall.

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em3rgent0rdr
This is known as "Price Discrimination" and is perfectly fine:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination)

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TheCoelacanth
As are articles that point out that price discrimination is happening. Free
markets function best with well informed consumers.

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nodesocket
Wal-Mart is a corporation right? They can set prices as they see fit. The
market set's the prices of everybody's startup here on HN, why would it be any
different for them?

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ht98oeth23th
Because their slogan is "Always Lower Prices. Always." So when it's obvious
they are lying, it's nice to point it out to others who may not have noticed.

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dmihal
That sounds like a generic corporate slogan, not a contractual obligation

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dpweb
Amazon sets their prices to match prices of online retailers automatically.
Others do too. WM would defeat this by setting online prices higher, making
their in store the lowest price.

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candiodari
Without tax and wages cheating everything would be more expensive online than
in (large) stores. Amazon shouldn't be able to match Walmart in prices at all.
Nor should any other online store.

I get that that doesn't match your experience after 15 years of Amazon.com
being cheaper than stores, but there are clear reasons for that and those
reasons have been going away.

Tax treatment has been equalizing, Amazon is now charging VAT in a different
(much more fair) way, and there has been action against the abuse of
international and interstate postal agreements to get free or absurdly cheap
deliveries.

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icebraining
Because Walmart physical store employees get paid a lot, right?

I don't find it hard to believe that there's plenty of cheating going on, but
I'd bet online will still win in the future. Workers are being replaced, while
well located real estate is only getting more expensive.

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candiodari
[http://gothamist.com/2015/08/15/life_inside_the_nightmare_am...](http://gothamist.com/2015/08/15/life_inside_the_nightmare_amazon_wo.php)

Point taken, although I do think Walmart still wins in terms of labour
conditions.

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ars
I used to order everything from them online - it was great, then I checked
receipts and realized they were ripping me off.

No more orders from me.

No idea why they would do this - aren't they trying to compete with Amazon?
They are only hurting themselves now.

I do still go to their stores every other month and try to stock up. Maybe
that's what they want.

But they are no longer an internet company to me. And long-term I think that
is foolish.

I wish Amazon grocery prices were competitive. But they like brand names too
much, and I avoid those usually.

~~~
u801e
> I used to order everything from them online - it was great, then I checked
> receipts and realized they were ripping me off.

What I usually do is go through their website for things I want to order, note
their prices, and then go to the store. Anything on the list that's cheaper in
the store I'll buy. I'll then purchase the remaining items from their website.

Given Discover's promotion of 5% back on online purchases from Walmart.com, it
works out for me.

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loeg
They also include free shipping, so, maybe it's not that much more in the end?

~~~
chipperyman573
Free shipping if your order is over a certain amount (I think $25). And it's
really not free shipping if you pay for it indirectly. In my opinion it's
actually worse because they use "free shipping" as a selling point, even
though it's not free at all.

In fact, if they add x% to most products, requiring it to be over $25 is just
a way of guaranteeing that you are actually paying for shipping in full, just
not as an itemized option.

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Johnny555
Isn't that obvious? How else would they pay for the "free shipping" if not in
the profit they make on purchases?

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chipperyman573
The free shipping isn't from the profit they make from their products, it's
from the extra cost added to all their products that are listed online. Their
pre-shipping profit is greater than the profit of the items in the store. Once
they spend the money to ship the items, it's roughly the same.

For example, let's say a widget costs $10 in Walmart stores and will cost $1
for walmart ship with their negotiated contracts. If I go to the store, I can
pay $10 and buy the widget. However, if I go online, Walmart.com will say the
item costs $11 with "free shipping", or I can pick it up in store for a $1
"discount" (so now I pay $10 for a "$11" item). So even though they get all
the positive PR and subconscious biases associated with free shipping, they
are not paying for it at all. They even pretend like you're getting a great
deal by going and picking it up yourself, even though you're just paying what
you otherwise would have if you skipped walmart.com entirely.

~~~
Johnny555
_The free shipping isn 't from the profit they make from their products, it's
from the extra cost added to all their products that are listed online_

What's the difference between the profit they make from the products, and
money they make from extra cost added to the products? Isn't that just another
way to define profit?

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purplezooey
Weird trends here lately. A friend of mine recently bought a jacket at REI
online and saw it cheaper at the REI store. They wouldn't refund the
difference and said "we don't price match our own products".

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brudgers
My understanding is that Walmart's store managers have significant latitude in
regard to merchandising and pricing. This conforms to my anecdotal experience
regarding variations between stores within the same metropolitan statistical
area and across states.

Somehow the fact that Amazon and Ebay have different prices for the same items
in their online listings seems to shed some light here, but I'm not really
sure exactly how or why.

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theDoug
Prices and selection differ between what Alexa quotes and Amazon.com[1]. This
kind of stuff is very common, but specifically highlighting Wal-Mart seems
odd.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/6evffg/alexa_prices...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/6evffg/alexa_prices_items_higher_than_amazon_webstore/)

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STRiDEX
Walmart literally advertises lower prices on select items if you drive to the
store and pick it up. Right on the website.

[http://help.walmart.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1698/~/picku...](http://help.walmart.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1698/~/pickup-
discount)

~~~
gscott
Amazon gets many of their prices by scraping competitors websites. Higher
prices on walmart.com might mean higher prices on Amazon too.

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fapjacks
Yeah, no kidding. I have always worn just typical Levis work jeans for most of
my adult life just like my grandpa, and the price for Levis has _always_ been
"Holy smokes" cheap in Walmart stores and actually fairly expensive online.

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koolhead17
Some Kindle e-books are costlier than hard copies..

