When you walk into a store like
Wal-Mart, how do you feel? What thoughts come into your mind? Are you
overwhelmed at the endless aisles of mass produced products, or are you
in awe of the warehouse-sized store? Last time I was in a Wal-Mart,
the place was in a state of pandemonium: products were scattered on the
floor, there were countless skids sitting at the end of an aisle
waiting to be placed on a shelf and there was one cashier trying to
cater to the 10 people standing in line.
While reading “From Cradle to Coffin”, the
visual details described made me think of my experiences in department
stores and super markets. From the reading, I understood that there
were many new products being introduced to consumers via the country
store and that most products actually had a specific benefit applicable
to daily life. How do you think that compares with what stores have
today?
Each time I entire a Big-box store, I
always see a nearly infinite supply of trinkets, toys, candy, dollar
DVD’s and other mass produced products, which makes me think that our
habits as consumers have changed exponentially over the years. Upon
doing some research, I found an article about sustainability and quality
issues that plague Wal-Mart. In recent news, Walmart has been found to
use dangerous chemicals in paints used for children’s toys and other
applications. In the article, titled “Is your stuff falling apart? Thank
Walmart”, Stacy Mitchell says, “
I did, however, spot a toaster
that retails for $6.24 — a price that renders its longevity virtually
irrelevant. If it breaks, just buy another.” This is the motive of
modern day consumerism, if it breaks buy another. This is the same
concept related to the consumer technology obsession; when the new
products come out, throw the old ones away. This is fueled by our
rapidly expanding desire for consumer goods. Mitchell notes that “The
average household now buys a new TV every 2.5 years, up from every 3.4
years in the early 1990s. We buy more than 2 billion bath towels a year,
up from 1.4 billion in 1994. And on and on.”
While reading, I also noticed the amount
of specialty goods that came from other countries. For example, there
were “Tea chests… covered with Chinese characters. There was allspice
form Jamaica and the East Indies; bags of almonds from Malaga and
Valencia; just possibly some rare bananas from the West Indies, and
indigo from Madras.” (Carson 201) Carson then goes on to describe more
products from places around the world, such as Germany, Ceylon,
Madagascar and Brazil. When Carson talks about “the visual demonstration
in commercial geography,” we see what he means when he lists the
products and their origins. If you spent a half of an hour in Meijer,
could you easily identify products from as many countries as the ones
Carson listed?
Country stores seem to exist only in
legends today. I have heard folks from earlier generations speak of
going “into town.” Moments like that seem lost in the past to me because
daily life today is so fast paced and rushed. Artists have attempted
to retrieve and recreate those lost moments through illustrations and
renditions of the past. I think that the descriptions offered by Carson
fit well with the artistic renditions of general stores, because going
to the store used to be such a big deal, as it often required traveling
a long distance very slowly and when customers arrived it was worth
the trip to have access to the necessities of daily life and also to
luxurious commodities not seen before. Today, stores are flooded with
massed produced junk, which is a blatant product of consumerism. A
notion that producing and importing more products will help the
capitalist economy is the driving factor of this, but mass production
and mass consumption harm the economy and consumers rather than help
them, as pointed out with quality control issues.
Clayton Gross
I believe that country stores are a thing of the past due to the pace of modern technology and people’s incessant need for “the next big thing” as far as goods and services are concerned. With the relative ease involved with someone driving to a nearby “megastore” and purchasing just about anything they desire, small businesses such as country stores will stay an entity of the past. I rarely shop at Wal-Mart. I cannot get over their anti-union labor practices and the fact that they employ child labor overseas in order to keep their prices low. My (few) experiences seemed very identical to the way you have described yours as far as the long lines and dealing with other shoppers is concerned. It’s a shame that country stores are not as common as they once were. I am sure a shopping trip to one would be much more pleasant.
ReplyDelete-John Woehrmeyer
I agree completely with John and Clayton. Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, and Meijer are the present, as well as the future. Although I am an employee of Kroger, and we are a part of a nation-wide Union, I feel that a country store or a "convenience" store as they are called now will never stand in comparison to chain stores such as these. I do enjoy working at Kroger, but at the same time I hear a lot of similar stories from older customers. "I used to shop at a market or local grocery store, but you just cannot beat the prices of this store". I often times talk to an elderly man that used to own a small market in Hamilton who sold his building in order to pay his bills, and he says that slowly all of these chains are cornering the grocery market, as well as the selling of gasoline. He said something that at first startled me, but I realized he was right. "Look at stores like Kroger, Wal-Mart, and Meijer. They even run gas stations, and some of these gas stations even have little convenience stores even though the main store is within walking distance. We will never see a small-market store open and be successful ever again". Mass-production has made these stores possible. I wish I could have experienced a country store such as this, dealing with experts in their markets and building rapport with every customer.
ReplyDelete-Todd Gottschall
I think that so far everyone has hit the nail right on the head. These large corporations have more money, mobility, and overall resources to put their stores and products into good positions to be successful. And, as Todd said, the smaller stores don't have the ability to offer the prices of the larger chains. The only advantage that the smaller country stores have is that sense of the personal, the everybody knows everybody mentality that some people are naturally drawn to. At one point in time, that was far more important to people than it is today. Now our society is geared to the biggest, baddest, fastest, and we want it right now. We no longer care about the personal connection that these stores have to offer. I personally have been into the country store setting many times because my family is from the Kentucky and Tennessee area, and although Walmart is trying their hardest to get into every nook and cranny there are still some country stores left. When I walked in with my uncle, the shop owner (Mel) looked and they started up a conversation. And when my I mentioned Cincinnati chili, the shop owner hadn't ever heard of it and he wrote himself a note to look into it. Much to the delight of my uncle, he called me a month later and said that Mel had ordered individually canned skyline chili things to be in the store. That's a level of service and personal customer satisfaction that, despite the best efforts of the megastores, they will never achieve.
ReplyDelete-Brandon Walter
While all of you are focusing on the negative aspects of "Big Box" stores like Wal-Mart and Meijer, I think there is another blatant theme in this Blog that Clayton was trying to convey about waste and how as Americans living in a fast paced society we are always clammering for the next big thing, the next faster technology, and any new fad that might make our lives a little easier. While I agree that the production of so many new and updated goods each year is causing consumers to keep/ use products for shorter periods of time, I do not agree that mass production of goods should be halted. Because without creating new needs and wants for the consumers to buy, the entire economy cannot exist and new technologies would go to waste and incentives for new inventions to be thought up would be lost. If this occurred it would force our society into a non-changing or evolving vacuum which I think would cause society to regress and fall behind other world leading markets like China and Japan, which could compromise the influence and power the United States has as a world power, which we do not not want to happen if we want to aim to preserve our democracy and our democratic rights as free individuals.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do not agree with the cessation of the mass production of items, I do agree with Clayton that mass-production has caused Americans to become more wasteful over the years. But, I think that there could be another solution to stopping this waste due to new technologies making old luxuries obsolete. I think the U.S. economy and consumer marketplace, including both the producer and the consumer could combat this issue of waste by connecting consumers and non-profits, who will take and use last season's clothes or a first generation iPhone, and use these products to better the lives of not only struggling individual in our own nation but also to bring aid and comfort to societies and nations abroad struggling to meet the daily requirements for survival. So what I think would be a better proposal to waste management, is the partnership between businesses and non-profits and the use of advertisements to persuade the consumer to donate their old goods instead of throwing them away and filling up our landfills.
In closing, I believe that while "big box" stores might not be as charming as a local mom and pop owned business or offer that same type of personal connection, that "Big Box" stores like Wal-Mart and Meijer are not only essential to preserving the standards of our everyday lives, but that they are also the backbones of our economy, keeping people and suppliers employed all across the nation and thus helping to regulate our ever fluctuating economy and thus helping us to regulate the state of our own lives and allowing us to live more comfortably.
-Michelle Tobeson
I feel the big box stores have destroyed the small country stores. Where I live in Ross, there is a small grocery store IGA, before the large super stores like Wal-Mart and Meijer were built the IGA store was a vital part of peoples shopping in the area. The store was the biggest and closeted grocery store around for miles until the “Big Box” stores were built. The shelves of the store are almost always bear, because there prices are Slightly higher than Wal-Marts. I feel in the years to come this will happen to more and more stores if it hasn’t already happened. As the consumers find better deals at the bigger stores it does not matter have fair they live away from them because the small store down the street can’t match the prices and don’t have the product anymore. I also think people have become more of a single group consumer, which means everyone travels to the largest suppliers for the product they need of going to the local store.
ReplyDeleteDon Yowler