Word: price
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...very different Walmart; in fact, it's not a Walmart at all. It is called Best Price Modern Wholesale, in collaboration with Walmart's Indian partner Bharti Enterprises, in order to get around the country's rigid foreign-investment restrictions. Members of the store have to be in business in order to do transactions in wholesale, but their families get cards that allow them to buy at retail prices. All sales are in cash. (Read how Walmart overcame India's tough business restrictions...
...almost everyone in the business-oriented town is a merchant. Furthermore, the cash-and-carry format allows Bharti and Walmart to co-opt a part of the competition - the mom-and-pop, or kiryana, stores - by turning them into customers. In fact, there's a section within the Best Price store called a "model store," where kiryana shop owners are taught how to arrange goods in their store and optimize inventories to maximize profits...
...regulars at Best Price is Rohit Kalia, 29, a restaurateur, who is filling an already overflowing trolley with a 5-kg pack of paneer - the Indian vegetarian's favorite cottage cheese - and 12 tins of baby corn. Kalia says he visits every second day for supplies since he gets many things cheaper here. "This store has certainly expanded my range of choice," he says. "But it's just one more store where I buy supplies from. I still get better prices and more convenience shopping at my usual suppliers." He is cut short by a commotion - the appearance...
...take a while, however, to persuade the locals to change their shopping habits. "I'll come here only once in a while," says Dalvinderjit Kaur, a housewife, whose son is filling out a form to get membership at Best Price. "I have shopped at the same kiryana shop for 18 years." There are many reasons customers like Kaur prefer their kiryana shops: they deliver for free, even for small orders; they allow regular customers credit; and they are close by and personal. "He knows us so well," she says. "When my daughter went to America to study, he called...
...bountiful harvest of California strawberries, melons, grapes, peaches and nectarines overflows the nation's summer tables. But that luscious crop mostly emerges thanks to farm workers who labor in flat fields under a scorching sun - and has a price higher than the grocery-store bill. Every year many farm workers become sick, and some die. Typical of the fatalities was Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, who was just 17. In May 2008, she died after picking grapes in Merced County for nine hours in 95-degree heat. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attended her funeral and promised to do more to protect workers...