The Demise of the Mid-range Product

I've kept plugging away at The Wal-mart Effect, mostly on my weekly trips down to Charlotte. Since I'm not the one doing most of the shopping for our family, I was somewhat dissociated from some of the factors that the book discusses. It had been at least a year and a half since I had even stepped foot inside a Wal-mart. But as Christmas shopping pulled me in for a quick look in a Sam's Club, I could see the Wal-mart Effect everywhere I looked.

The most noticable difference I've seen in the last few years is the drying up of the mid-market. Just look at coffee makers. Five years ago, it was possible to buy a cheap Mr. Coffee for $20, or a really solid Krups for $100. Now, the downward price pressure from Wal-mart has created a huge gap in the middle of the market. The brands like Krups or Hamilton-Beach that used to make solid last-you-a-decade products are now fielding items made a cheap and cheap-looking plastic. And if you thought you could spend $150 to find a really good coffee maker . . . forget it. You are either buying a $60 shadow, or spending $2,000 on a gleaming contraption that could stand in for a time machine on the Sci-Fi channel. When the hell did people start spending thousands of dollars on a coffee machine? But that, also, is the Wal-mart Effect; manufacturers must either play their game and make cheaper and cheaper products, or they have to boldly differentiate themselves on quality and put a bolder price tag on it to show you that you are not going to find it cheaper down at Target.