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I want to live like Costco people

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Re: I want to live like Costco people

#151

Post by hdhdhsjsbdh »

queuebert wrote: post #113
Lucent wrote: post #9

Costco's gimmick is relieving you of choice and price shopping. They find the best stuff and don't mark it up. If Consumer is your identity yet you fear executing its labors, let Costco step in and become your denomination of consumerism, complete with tithe, proscribed usury, and communion hot dog.

I wouldn't call it a gimmick when the business has been so successful for so many years. They target educated shoppers who want to buy quality at minimum markup and not think too hard about it. If I want a TV, I know Costco will have good ones at a good price. If I need socks, same. Their food is cheaper and better than Kroger. It's just a win-win for shoppers and Costco. The only tradeoff is selection and dealing wi…

Parallel to that, I have to imagine Costco makes a lot of money off of impulse purchases, which are induced by uncertainty in the specific items they will have available, plus mutable store layouts.

Long ago in undergrad I took a retail marketing class and we did a field trip to Costco; the GM told us it was part of their policy to rearrange parts of the store occasionally so that you had to browse the entire place to check off your shopping list. This increases the likelihood that you stumble across new products. So it’s this combination of “best price/quality without decision fatigue” plus some impulse buying that works for them. The fact that they are figuring out the price/quality trade off for you up front probably also makes it easier to impulse buy with fewer regrets.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#152

Post by dragonwriter »

fckgw wrote: post #91
OutOfHere wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good comment, but IMHO the main reason to not love it so much is the annual membership fee. It sits well with cult cultivation. Other stores don't require it and they don't form a cult around them.

Costco derives the majority of their revenue from the membership fee, followed by services. They actually make very little on the products themselves as they have a hard cap on markups at like 11% or something around there. The membership is the whole reason they can offer the deals they do.

> Costco derives the majority of their revenue from the membership fee,

Costco revenue is about 2% membership fee and 98% sales of merchandise and services (most of which is merchandise, not services.)

Now, the membership fee is its main source of profit (because the merchandise sales are extremely low margin), but not its main source of revenue.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#153

Post by dghlsakjg »

tavavex wrote: post #87
Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Something about the whole thing always registered to me as, like, lame—too normcore, too boring, perhaps even too cheugy to an informed and taste-driven millennial ur-consumer like me. The kinds of brands I like to buy aren’t what they sell at Costco Good example of how people can build identities through their brand choices and purchasing habits. It’s a foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product…

> I know some will try to turn this into a criticism of Americans, but in my travels and international business experience I wouldn’t even rank Americans in the top 10 for integrating brands and identity. Can you give a few examples of those brand-centric cultures? Which product categories do they follow? I've never seen anything like this, so if I were to go to one of the places that has this culture, I should proba…

China, India, Singapore, and Korea are a few off the top of my head.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#154

Post by ZeWaka »

ASinclair wrote: post #150
yabones wrote: post #137

I get the allure, but it's not for me and my partner. We live in a small apartment. We drive a small car. The pantry has a good amount of dry bulk & canned food, but we largely shop one week at a time. Sure, we could "lock in" on two or three foods, buy weeks worth of them at a time, and save some money. But like most people we like a bit of verity. It's just not possible to buy such massive quantities of things with…

The thing is you can save a ton of money on a few non-food items to make it worth it. Just over-the-counter medicines save me a huge chunk of the membership fee. Then there are just random household goods: paper products, trash bags, dishwasher detergent, etc.

It's great for canned goods and anything bulk for cooking, see: salmon.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#155

Post by FireBeyond »

legitster wrote: post #41
Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Something about the whole thing always registered to me as, like, lame—too normcore, too boring, perhaps even too cheugy to an informed and taste-driven millennial ur-consumer like me. The kinds of brands I like to buy aren’t what they sell at Costco Good example of how people can build identities through their brand choices and purchasing habits. It’s a foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product…

> "What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All th…

> Unfortunately I think America is starting to lose this way a bit, with the influx of newer premium brands

Witness Erewhon fruit juices/smoothies.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#156

Post by [deleted] »

yabones wrote: post #137

I get the allure, but it's not for me and my partner. We live in a small apartment. We drive a small car. The pantry has a good amount of dry bulk & canned food, but we largely shop one week at a time. Sure, we could "lock in" on two or three foods, buy weeks worth of them at a time, and save some money. But like most people we like a bit of verity. It's just not possible to buy such massive quantities of things with…

[deleted]

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#157

Post by jldugger »

legitster wrote: post #29

I grew up in a post soviet country. To me Costco, has perfected the soviet ideal of shopping more than any soviet economy ever could. In a Costco, we are all equal. I could be shopping for the same set of beige slacks right next to the CEO of a multi-million dollar company and never know it. We'll own the same Waterpik. Identical towels. Our lawn furniture will look the same. Everything is purchased at a fair price.…

Interestingly, my local subreddit loves to describe Costco as a late stage capitalist dystopia.

- fighting for space everywhere: fighting for a parking lot, avoiding people seeming to ram you with their shopping cart, waiting for the extended family of seven in front of you to pick a cereal so you can leave the aisle, waiting for traffic to clear so you can _leave_ the costco

- you have to pay to get in

- and then you have to pay extra to jump to the head of the line

- fights over rare stock like pokemon cards

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#159

Post by FireBeyond »

Lucent wrote: post #9

Costco's gimmick is relieving you of choice and price shopping. They find the best stuff and don't mark it up. If Consumer is your identity yet you fear executing its labors, let Costco step in and become your denomination of consumerism, complete with tithe, proscribed usury, and communion hot dog.

One area where I'd say Costco -is- a let down is electronics. Yes, you don't always need the latest and greatest, but in my area Costco was selling 2 and 3 year old model TVs that have been superseded by the manufacturer at their (low but still retail) same prices.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#160

Post by natebc »

ASinclair wrote: post #150
yabones wrote: post #137

I get the allure, but it's not for me and my partner. We live in a small apartment. We drive a small car. The pantry has a good amount of dry bulk & canned food, but we largely shop one week at a time. Sure, we could "lock in" on two or three foods, buy weeks worth of them at a time, and save some money. But like most people we like a bit of verity. It's just not possible to buy such massive quantities of things with…

The thing is you can save a ton of money on a few non-food items to make it worth it. Just over-the-counter medicines save me a huge chunk of the membership fee. Then there are just random household goods: paper products, trash bags, dishwasher detergent, etc.

Their pharmacy is A+.

I get my dogs seizure meds there and they're about $10 a month but at a regular pharmacy they'd be $300+.

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