03-31-2014, 05:16 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Oneself
With Walmart in Hilo, and Amazon online, can someone tell me what is the advantage of driving to Costco ?
Short of some emergency I cannot currently foresee, I will not shop at Wal Mart. I cannot overlook how badly they treat their employees and their vendors. Besides, their pricing is often deceptive, with great values featured on their endcaps and other featured items, then ordinary prices or worse on the shelves in between.
Costco operates on a different business model completely, paying their employess well ($18/hr to start) and paying their CEO a sane amount ($500,000 yr) vs Wal Mart's CEO's insane $20.7 million. They also price the merchandise they sell on a fixed markup basis, rather than lowballing one item and then overcharging on the next as others do. And what they sell is largely known brands and quality goods, one item per category, in a large size they can buy and then sell for a low price, rather than shoddy cheap goods bought for the lowest possible price.
It's not just that Costco's prices are low, on the kind of merchandise I want to buy, but they're low in what I believe to be an ethically and socially responsible way.