It's funny ... their big push into the Canadian market brought a few stores to my area ... almost everything in the store is priced higher than the alternative stores here. I don't see much advantage to them, and have bought nothing from them.
On the flip side of that coin, one of the Zellers locations that closed down due to Target coming in has reopened again. Target never moved into their lease, so they are still Zellers ...
Even in the United States, Target is priced higher than Wal-Mart. People still go to Target. It's viewed as a somewhat higher class store than Wal-Mart.
I'm in this camp. Target is also a little closer to my house and easier to get to, but the shopping environment is much nicer even though much of the inventory is identical. After I shop at Wal-Mart I feel like I need a shower. Not so much at Target. K-Mart is similar, but while Wal-Mart just has an air of bone-cutting industrial cheapness, K-Mart is more sad, it's more like the dilapidated shanty, leaning to one side, with ten kids playing in the yard.
> K-Mart is more sad, it's more like the dilapidated shanty, leaning to one side, with ten kids playing in the yard.
I'll bet I first stepped foot in to a K-Mart some 40 years ago. The really sad thing is that by my recollection, K-Mart has always been that way. Dirty, poorly-lit in many cases, and eternally in need of an update. Perhaps there was a time that K-Mart stores looked shiny, new and not run down, but it must have been before my time.
There was a time in the Super K era where the stores were pretty well done. The grocery store side was even pretty nice. It did pretty well in some areas, but they just couldn't change their reputation and Target kept the high end and Walmart kept the low end, leaving Kmart in this bad middle ground.
It's bad enough how dirty and run down K-Mart stores are but another thing that always drives me crazy is you can't easily find stuff at different K-Mart stores as it seems each store's floor plan is laid out differently (and all their floor plans seem haphazardly).
Strange - I don't quite see that - maybe it's regional?
There are some things Walmart in our area is lower on, but it's usually less than a 2% difference on the things we buy. We've got the Target Red Card, so everything's 5% off, which usually means it's < Walmart. Walmart is slightly further from us as well, so Target is faster to get to.
But more than that, to me, the checkout experience at Walmart is usually abysmally slow (self-checkout makes is sometimes OK). Target by me rarely has more than 2 people ahead of you - in busy times I see a floor manager calling more people up to open cash registers - that's quite common here. Walmart - never. Yeah, it keeps their prices a bit lower, maybe, but I'd usually rather pay the extra 70 cents and be out 7 minutes faster.
If I'm in the mood for more savings, Aldi has them both beat, and I go to Aldi a couple times a month to stock up on stuff. IMO, Walmart gets beat on price by Aldi, and on service by Target.
> Strange - I don't quite see that - maybe it's regional?
Counter-intuitively, I have found that the quality of a Walmart is proportional to how rural the surrounding area is. Walmart's in metro areas, next to expensive suburbs (say, any of the towns surrounding DC)? Total 3rd world shit. Walmarts in busted down ex-mining towns deep in PA? Surprisingly nice. Empty, but nice.
Maybe it's just because an empty walmart is a walmart that doesn't take much abuse. They all sell more or less the same shit, except the mining town walmart will also sell ammo.
...the checkout experience at Walmart is usually abysmally slow (self-checkout makes is sometimes OK).
Checkout was why, when I last lived in densely-populated areas, I would put off the WalMart run until I absolutely had to go, for those things Target or other stores didn't carry. (Out here in the hinterland WalMart seems adequate.) It has been a few years, but in my experience self-checkout did not speed up the process. It seemed as if most of my fellow shoppers might have had better luck if they'd been asked to operate the Space Shuttle.
self-checkout is hit and miss. I really really really wish for 2 things:
1. "beginner" flag on some self-checkout systems
2. An actual roped walkway up to the self-checkout area, like in a bank. You get to the front, you choose the next available area. I've lost track of how many times someone was 'behind' me, but walked past me to grab a kiosk I was walking towards. insane.
There's so many ways self-checkouts can be improved, I don't believe for a moment the arguments against it when I read "people prefer live tellers". There are a few live tellers I prefer, but I don't prefer live tellers overall over self-checkout, but self-checkout is implemented so poorly at so many stores... argh...
In Canada, Walmart seems to be at the level of USA Target in terms of store quality. When I moved to the USA, I didn't understand why people said 'ugh walmart' until I went to a USA Walmart. So to a typical Canadian, target just seems like a smaller walmart.
The lines tend to be much shorter at the Target here, that's the prime reason I avoid the nearer Walmart. I'm not sure if it costs more or less in practice, they seem about the same to me really. Walmart does have a better selection of motor oil though and they take my old oil for recycling, so that's about the only reason I go to Walmart anymore, but it's annoying to wait in that long line with just 5qt of Castrol.
Target is generally higher than Wal-Mart because a lot of the merchandise tends to be higher quality. With some items, though, price varies, and Target can be cheaper if there's a sale involved.
I don't see much competition on price, but I wasn't a huge fan of Zellers. Most of my (few) trips to Walmart have felt like "Dante's Inferno meets Lord of the Flies", so I'm quite happy to have Target in Canada now.
To be honest, I get pretty much everything I need from any of the bigger Grocery stores, which all carry more than just basic groceries now.
Most anything else, I get from Home Hardware or Canadian Tire. I confess, though, I get most of the kids' clothes from Walmart. I do occasionally get some from Zellers or Real Canadian Superstore.
True. You can get a lot of the stuff that Target sells elsewhere. One thing that I like about Target in my neighbourhood is that it's generally so empty that it feels like you have the whole place to yourself. (Not that that's sustainable in the long term.) It's also open until 10 PM, which generally makes it the only store open after 9 PM around here.
On the flip side of that coin, one of the Zellers locations that closed down due to Target coming in has reopened again. Target never moved into their lease, so they are still Zellers ...