The day after Thanksgiving. Traditionally the best shopping day from a retailer or manufacturer standpoint. From the consumer standpoint; “it is the best of times, it is the worst……”
I ventured out on Friday morning to visit my local WalMart. I needed a few things including some motor oil (a T-giving gift to my RX-8), some shampoo, and some sugar for my world famous pecan pie.
I probably could have delayed a bit, but the “8″ is cranky if it doesn’t get its oil and I am always curious about how the big retailers stand up to the pressure of the cagey consumer on busy days.
There was a pile of people in the parking lot, and the cart selection gave some view of just how many people were wandering around the inside of the store (a bunch).
I found my products without too much incident, and the only merchandising comment of value I could come up with was….Who the heck took the password to the sign printing program at WalMart? The signs I saw were hand scrawled with some creating pricing (where does that pesky decimal point go anyway?) some numbers I was unfamiliar with and some spelling that had me guessing (despite the fact the sign was affixed to the product with the brand very much in view.)
As I meandered up to the checkout area, I caught my first indication that perhaps the trip was not going to be uneventful. There were lines of consumers waiting to checkout. Long lines. But only three of them.
I wandered down to the self-checkout lanes which were unoccupied, puzzled about why no one was using them. A store employee yelled out….”those are closed. They don’t work in cold weather!” Huh? This is the Chicago area. We have cold weather for at least 7 months each year. The self-checkouts don’t work in the cold weather? And the lone sign-person had not gotten around to putting a sign up to warn customers that “cHekouts don’t werk in cold Wether.”
So, I wandered back to the now longer lines and waited. I waiting and noted that at least two of the people checking out customers had little or no experience running the checkout process. On at least two occasions a “price check” was called for, but there were no personnel available to go look for the prices. On another occasion a cooking bag, stocked at the checkout was “not-on-file” in the scan system and so the consumer could not buy the product. Why it could not simply be put in by hand was beyond me.
To their credit the employees rallied and opened three more lanes while I waited and I grabbed the opportunity to check out. On my way up I saw four abandoned carts in the checkout area alone. All were quite full.
As I left the self-checkouts were still inoperable due to the cold weather. This day was not going to be a sensational sales day at this particular WalMart.
A black-eye on black Friday.
The Wall Street Journal details holiday sales that are generated via smartphones. They are quoting sales increases between 4X (Paypal) to 10X (Ruelala) vs. last year at this time. That’s some pretty interesting growth, having as much to do with better phone shopping apps as it does with consumer comfort in using the most mobile of purchasing platforms.
