this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
111 points (86.3% liked)
Business
434 readers
122 users here now
A place to share business news and insights.
Rules
- Follow lemmy.world rules
- Only post content related to business
- Do not use this community to promote your business
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Hypothetically say the price of membership goes up 20% and they put all of that back into keeping prices on goods lower.
It would benefit big families and people who shop there more than people who dont. Keeping the whales happy is more important than the guy who just likes cheap rotisserie chickens and hot dogs.
Would it? Their profit margin on goods is minuscule. Their profit margin on memberships is (practically) infinite. Losing subscribers could cost them big on their money printing department, and may not end up having the benefit they're after.
It could very well backfire, just saying that "putting membership price up to save you money" sounds like bullshit but in the context of retaining people who spend thousands a month at the cost of (potentially) the people who barely use their memberships and spend very little does make some sense.
I'm just not sure you seriously believe that there's any chance they "put all of that back into keeping prices on goods lower". That's not the reality we live in.
If anything, maybe they will discount shrimp by $1 for thirty days for a headline (and then of course they'll quietly raise the price of blueberries by $1.50 for the rest of that year).
They won't just not profit when they can and they won't not "get revenge" on the consumer for saving.
Its all hypothetical but remember they have literally unlimited access to our analytics including name and age and we pay them for the privilege.
If their marketing and research people have concluded that if they up membership $10 annually from 130,000,000 members, lose 1000000 people who have decided that the price hike is just too much, take the 1.2 Billion in extra funds and pump it back into making bread, milk and eggs significantly cheaper to get more people doing their weekly shop there that they will make 2.9 billion more on impulse purchasing they will do that.
Corporations gonna corporation, its on consumers to not be dumb fucks.