On Mar 9, 2:08 pm, "Stephen Blackpool"
wrote:
March 8, 2007
Is Home Depot shafting shoppers?http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...meDepotShaftin...

By cutting back on employees, the home-improvement retailer is putting
the screws to the people it needs most: its customers.

[snip]

There are two market forces at work. One is that many a homeowner
prefers the convenience of going to one store to find what they need
for their household projects as opposed to going to three, four, five
different places. Two is a large-scale retailer is often positioned to
undercut the prices of smaller, locally-owned stores - e.g., Wal-Mart
killing the small businesses across America.

This trend towards fewer employees as a way of saving the company
money is nothing new: Macy's was doing in back in the early 1990s when
I was a manager there. The belief is the customer doesn't want
employee help and the staff is the easiest place to cut overhead
costs. I know a salesperson who, when Macy's converted their employees
from commission to hourly pay went from making an equivalet of $13/
hour commission to an hourly rate of $8.25/hour. He left pretty
quickly, as did most other competent salespeople.

What HD, Macy's and myriad other large retailers fail to understand is
many customers will not even notice slightly higher-than-average
prices if they get exceptional customer service from well-trained,
knowledgable staff. It's what keeps places like Nordstrom and the
Men's Warehouse and other clothing retailers in business. And it's
what will set apart local hardware stores from the big box places.