I guess it's how one care define leadership. The USA had one of the most poor responses to the Pandemic on the face of the planet when nations such as say S. Korea and Japan with huge populations stuffed into an area less than the size of California fared far better. Trillions of dollars were handed out most going to businesses who were not even in need. Couple things with War in free Europe, commodities, uncertainty's and Americans having one to three months of money even before the pandemic.
The inflation is global and we've actually faired far better than many a nation. Is consumer spending down? Yeah, sure is but at the same time sellers ignore the elephants in the room. They think about eBay, Amazon, Mercari etc and pay no consideration to the like's of Walmart, Macy's, Penny's, Kohls and many many many others. Walmart snatched the #2 spot in eCommerce as their ship to store model is very hard to beat, the third party sellers are mostly brick & mortar and Walmart demands low Internet price or they'll hide listings. They have vowed to grow the ecommerce presence by another 50% this year alone. They are working with liquidators/warehousing and have been. As I said in another post sometime back, I bought a 55" QLED JVC TV w/ all the bells and whistles, $248 to my door. The Roku remote was bad, called Walmart, they gave me the number of the supplier. Shipped me a new remote free, in talking with the person he told me Walmart online is becoming the preferred venue by which delisted products are moved. My TV was delisted in favor a new model that was not even at market yet. Bought an $800 BBQ grill for for less than 1/4 the MSRP and as of a few weeks back a $1400 basically gaming laptop for a bit over $450.
Then there is the result in other big retail from the Pandemic. They got caught with their pants down, big brick and mortar who treated online presence as a sideline, no longer the case. Atop that they being extraordinarily aggressive for consumer dollars. My lady bought over $800 MSRP in stuff from Macy's for a bit over $250 bucks few weeks back. When she compared pricing against Amazon and what she could find here she easily saved $250-$350 dollars. That echoes an article I read in The Financial Times, big retail is now taking the Internet very seriously and it's not going to stop basically.
Now sellers need to compete against big retail online. That doesn't mean because I sell widgets and Macy's, Walmart and whatall Pennys dont so I'm good. No, have to compete for consumer DOLLARS which are finite more so now than pre-pandemic and big retail online has just astonishing deals going on more and more so.
The economy is weaker than it's been and stronger than it's been at other times. The difference is people are being mindful of money having or currently enduring hardships, couple that with big retail now embracing the Internet. Walmarts revenue's are on the rocketship in store and online, Macy's is shipping to over 200 countries now and the list goes on.
Just the other night watching the news, 15% of cars bought in the last three years are being repossessed and of that 15%, 40% are basically middle class. They interviewed a woman who owns a repo business and she said her repo's are up 300%, that's three times as many repo's daily than a year ago.
Amazon isn't laying off people for sake of a good time, these third party venues now have to compete, really compete for consumer dollars. Yea, that sux and there is no end in sight... The Pandemic effect is the Internet in eCommerce has "Grown up" basically.
