Local family businesses are taking extreme measures:
St. Louis shoppers can expect to see more grocery prices fall as competitors react to Schnuck Markets Inc.’s move to cut what it charges for some 10,000 items.
“We’ve always been competitive, and we always will be. That’s the bottom line,” said Greg Dierberg, president and chief executive of Chesterfield-based Dierbergs Markets Inc. “We’ll react to any items that we need to.”
Are they providing better values for the customers in the region out of the goodness of their hearts or in cutthroat competition between the chains?
Of course not.
Schnuck Markets launched its aggressive pricing strategy on Sunday, ahead of what it sees as rapid expansion of Wal-Mart Supercenters into the St. Louis metro area. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., based in Bentonville, Ark., has more than 2,100 Supercenters in the U.S., including seven in the St. Louis market [sic, in that the story lacked a period]
Proof again that Wal-Mart is destroying mom-and-pop businesses and ultimately hurting the consumer. But it’s so subtle that you can’t see it unless you squint really, really hard until the very dust motes before your eyes become capitalistic monsters.
