Simon Willison’s Weblog

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2 items tagged “walmart”

2009

One way to establish that peace-preserving threat of mutual assured destruction is to commit yourself beforehand, which helps explain why so many retailers promise to match any competitor's advertised price. Consumers view these guarantees as conducive to lower prices. But in fact offering a price-matching guarantee should make it less likely that competitors will slash prices, since they know that any cuts they make will immediately be matched. It's the retail version of the doomsday machine.

James Surowiecki

# 9th November 2009, 10:06 am / amazon, james-surowiecki, new-yorker, pricing, walmart

2007

5 ways to break past the San Francisco echo-chamber. I like the idea of using the square-footage allocated to different things in Walmart to get an idea for what’s popular outside of geekdom.

# 23rd December 2007, 9:37 am / andrew-chen, geeks, nongeeks, walmart