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Message: <blockquote data-quote="vvvvvvv" data-source="post: 1345691" data-attributes="member: 5151">That's part of the negotiation process. The supplier agrees to a certain level of margin for Wal-Mart for a certain amount of space on a certain level shelf. When Wal-Mart accounts for a significant chunk of your revenue, you make concessions.Other large chains like Target also engage in the same practice. Once a chain gets to a level where they can negotiate (as in it would be stupid for the vendor to walk away), they start acting a lot like Wal-Mart because they can and it works.I used to cause trouble as a Department Manager because I would give vendors space on endcaps, on four-ways, on action alley features, etc. if I thought they'd move faster and if they had a higher margin than the corporate-mandated features. There was even a few times I'd let them put merchandise in a part of my grocery bin with a handshake agreement that they would work it more often than the one or two days they were scheduled to come it and their feature would be more than half empty and the items in the bin would be gone before their next scheduled day. It worked out great because that was merchandise I didn't have to work that was making a significant margin, and they were getting paid a commission on those sales, so they had an incentive to keep their handshake. Was it out of line with company policy? Yep. But discipline was avoided by way of profit margin sheets (i.e. each month consistently outranking many of the Supercenters in your district in sales while only having a Division-1 store).But yeah, one thing I learned from the vendors was that when Wal-Mart ran a 4-for-$10 12-pack special, some of them lowered their prices to protect Wal-Mart's margin. When the Homeland and United grocery stores ran the same, the store took a loss.ETA: Most of those agreements also require all parts to the item to be in the box. That's how my wife and I got our TV. Someone bought an $800 (on rollback) 32" Sanyo Vizon TV, took the included HDMI cable (going for $30 at the time), and returned the TV. The service desk associate didn't notice and gave the refund, but the claims associate did and couldn't send it back. We paid around $500 (store cost) for the TV.</blockquote>

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