Re: Gun Stores vs. Wal Mart

On Oct 4, 7:41 am, Bama Brian <bamaNOTbr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
AlMontestrucwrote:
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On Sep 28, 8:53 am, Bama Brian <bamaNOTbr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
trippin-2-8-trak wrote:
Walmart's prices on ammo and guns are nearly impossible to
beat-
the
only
ones that could match/beat them are the online/catalog
specialists
like
Midway and Cheaper than Dirt, etc.- and that would be on ammo
mostly.
They have new guns that sell for the same or less, than used
ones
in
our
local liquidator for sale papers.
Walmart beats on vendors in a serious manner, to get low prices
and
volume.
Good and bad results- the "ma and pa" gunshops are all going
out.
Lower prices mean lower quality.
Nope
http://www.reason.com/news/show/122019.html
Study some economics Brian.
WallyWorld forces vendors' prices down with every round of
negotiation.
At some point, which is fairly quickly reached, these lower
prices
mean the vendor starts losing money on the product - so the
vendor
redesigns the product for a lesser cost.
No shit. Which does not necessarily mean lower quality.
Study economics Brian. Industrial engineering too.
Economies of scale are one (of many) ways in which one can reduce
the
cost of manufacture of a product w/o reduction of quality.
Please indicate how selling to Walmart instead of the mom 'n pop
shop
causes the manufacturer to sell more guns so that this economy of
scale
kicks in. Do people suddenly start buying more guns because Walmart
carries them, or is there simply a shift from one retailer to
another?
Walmart has outlets across the country where they can sell far more
of
an
item than the local mom & pop, with proportional reduction in other
costs,
such as storage, shipping, etc
Walmart has locally a far lower per item overhead cost than the
local
mom
& pop shop. This means that their markup needs to be less for equal
per
item profit
This is basic economics and marketing costing stuff
Ok, but that doesn't explain how the manufacturer is making more money
by
selling for less.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
One can make more money by selling a product for less if your sales
volume goes up a lot.
Sure you can. However, do you think that people are going to buy more
guns
just because Wal-Mart carries them, or would it simply and largely be a
shift from one retailer to another?
Often you can buy raw materials cheaper if you can by larger
quantities of them, also various industrial operations get cheaper if
you are making say 100,000 identical parts rather than say 5,000.
One can for example in my firm afford to buy a computer controlled
programable milling machine if your sales volume of parts is large
enough, and if you can, then the cost per unit item drops like a rock
as you do not have to pay a skilled machinist say $30/hour, per each
part made, but rather pay a cnc machinist say $60 or even $120 per
hour to program the machine one time to make the cuts, then just feed
raw material to it and it makes parts for you till it runs out, the
power cuts off, the cutting tool needs to be replaced or something
like that.
In that case the cost becomes the price of the cnc machine amortized
over however many years it will last, and that turns out to be a hell
of a lot cheaper than a skilled machinist. The skilled machinist on
the other hand learns how to program CNC machines and then your
productivity goes way up and we have falling prices with higher
wages. It just takes capital and technology to do it.
Get it now?
Yep, just as soon as you can show me that gun sales through Wal-Mart
allows
manufactorers to sell considerably more guns than they would otherwise.
Insert evidence here --->
1 Lower prices to consumer always means more sales volume.
2 Product is put in frount of consumer at a place that he (the typical
consumer not you or me) spends more time at than a gun store (which
only people who already like and are interested in guns spend a lot of
time at) that does have have clothing, shoes, furniture, houshold
goods, grocheries, so he goes there anyway to buy, and so on that the
gun store does not. In other words you put the possibility of gun
purchase in the minds of people who might not otherwise buy a gun, and
so have a massivly wider consumer base.
3 Mainstreaming of product which Wal*mart is if nothing else
(mainstream America) such that if it is sold at wal*mart it is
acceptable, which is a big deal to get acceptance from parents or
spouse or other family.
Now all you have to do is show that manufacturers numbers went up enough to
matter.

I'm not your unpaid research assistant. I did that gig for far too
long in graduate school thanks. If you wish to assert contrary to
*VERY* well established economics theory, proven consistent with facts
in a vast number of cases, and AFAIK never ever been shown to be
inconsistent, that in a very major way increasing the consumer base
and minimizing the distribution costs is somehow harming the firearms
(or any other) industry that manufactures that product, rather than
helps it, you dig up the data.

And you can keep the Nobel prize.

Go buy a gun at WalMart. First thing you'll note is that they don't
sell either handguns OR ammo for them, unless it's also a long gun caliber.

Nor do they sell handgun accessories, such as holsters, laser sights, etc.

And last I heard long guns were the majority of the market, by a not
insignificant margin.




So now you want a long gun. But WalMart doesn't stock the one you want.
Now try to find a clerk who knows how to order what you want.


I have been to a wal-mart sporting goods section within the last
week. The selection was about half that of the long guns an average
gun store that builds it's business mainly around guns ammo and
accessories, such as combination gun store shooting range I go to.

If you are educated in guns enough that the difference in selection is
significant to you, then you are not the sort of customer that
broadens the market base. The casual customer who is not well
educated on the subject is the market wal*mart goes after in almost
all products, and does this at the expense of selection and at the
gain to the consumer of lower prices.

Now if you were a hell of a lot poorer than you are, such that any gun
was a major investment, wal*mart makes gun ownership easier.




If this is somehow increasing the consumer base and minimizing the
distribution costs, it's far beyond my experience in marketing and sales
to figure out how it works.
Oh well

.

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