{"id":187348,"date":"2013-03-31T17:35:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T22:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/03\/31\/henry-ford-knew-this-99-years-ago\/"},"modified":"2013-03-31T17:35:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-31T22:35:00","slug":"henry-ford-knew-this-99-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/03\/31\/henry-ford-knew-this-99-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Henry Ford Knew This 99 Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

When he doubled the pay of his workers to reduce turnover and increase productivity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It turns out that Wal-Mart has not realized how this works, and as a result, it is losing customers who are facing empty shelves<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Margaret Hancock has long considered the local Wal-Mart Stores Inc. superstore her one- stop shopping destination. No longer.<\/span>

<\/span> During recent visits, the retired accountant from Newark, Delaware, says she failed to find more than a dozen basic items, including certain types of face cream, cold medicine, bandages, mouthwash, hangers, lamps and fabrics.<\/span>

<\/span> The cosmetics section \u201clooked like someone raided it,\u201d said Hancock, 63.<\/span>

<\/span> Wal-Mart\u2019s loss was a gain for Kohl\u2019s Corp., Safeway Inc., Target Corp., and Walgreen Co. — the chains Hancock hit for the items she couldn\u2019t find at Wal-Mart.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cIf it\u2019s not on the shelf, I can\u2019t buy it,\u201d she said. \u201cYou hate to see a company self-destruct, but there are other places to go.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> It\u2019s not as though the merchandise isn\u2019t there. It\u2019s piling up in aisles and in the back of stores because Wal-Mart doesn\u2019t have enough bodies to restock the shelves, according to interviews with store workers. In the past five years, the world\u2019s largest retailer added 455 U.S. Wal-Mart stores, a 13 percent increase, according to filings and the company\u2019s website. In the same period, its total U.S. workforce, which includes Sam\u2019s Club employees, dropped by about 20,000, or 1.4 percent. Wal-Mart employs about 1.4 million U.S. workers.<\/span>

<\/span> Disorganized Stores<\/span>

<\/span> A thinly spread workforce has other consequences: Longer check-out lines, less help with electronics and jewelry and more disorganized stores, according to Hancock, other shoppers and store workers. Last month, Wal-Mart placed last among department and discount stores in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the sixth year in a row the company had either tied or taken the last spot. The dwindling level of customer service comes as Wal- Mart has touted its in-store experience to lure shoppers and counter rival Amazon.com Inc. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, they want to tout their in-store experience.<\/p>\n

As a part of that experience, they want their customers to deliver their packages for them for free<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Wal-Mart Stores Inc is considering a radical plan to have store customers deliver packages to online buyers, a new twist on speedier delivery services that the company hopes will enable it to better compete with Amazon.com Inc.<\/p>\n

Tapping customers to deliver goods would put the world’s largest retailer squarely in middle of a new phenomenon sometimes known as “crowd-sourcing,” or the “sharing economy.”<\/p>\n

A plethora of start-ups now help people make money by renting out a spare room, a car, or even a cocktail dress, and Wal-Mart would in effect be inviting people to rent out space in their vehicle and their willingness to deliver packages to others.<\/p>\n

Such an effort would, however, face numerous legal, regulatory and privacy obstacles, and Wal-Mart executives said it was at an early planning stage.<\/p>\n

Wal-Mart is making a big push to ship online orders directly from stores, hoping to cut transportation costs and gain an edge over Amazon and other online retailers, which have no physical store locations. Wal-Mart does this at 25 stores currently, but plans to double that to 50 this year and could expand the program to hundreds of stores in the future.<\/p>\n

Wal-Mart currently uses carriers like FedEx Corp for delivery from stores – or, in the case of a same-day delivery service called Walmart To Go that is being tested in five metro areas, its own delivery trucks.<\/p>\n

“I see a path to where this is crowd-sourced,” Joel Anderson, chief executive of Walmart.com in the United States, said in a recent interview with Reuters.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is brilliant.<\/p>\n

Let’s see, we have:<\/p>\n