For many companies, married heterosexual adults with children are beginning to be a market segment that is simply not worth the trouble.
Christians can’t decide whether to love or hate Walmart this season. On the bright side, Walmart has decided to emphasize Christmas. “Happy Holidays” is out, “Merry Christmas” is in. In fact, the joy-filled “Merry Christmas” is so strenuously endorsed that our local Walmart had Christmas goods out on the shelves before the Halloween candies had been put on clearance.
If turning the whole of the fall season into an extended Advent season is good, then Walmart is clearly going above and beyond the call.
On the other hand, Walmart is also clearly courting the gay lifestyle. It has become a partner of the Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, thereby joining nearly every one of the Fortune 500.
So, support for a lifestyle that results in the early, painful, diseased death of the consumer is nearly unanimous. Like addiction to tobacco, addiction to the homosexual lifestyle creates a consumer, but what a consumer! Instead of spending money only on tobacco products, they spend money on any epicurean delight. Best of all, while tobacco users often had dependents, homosexuals don’t. They have at least as much disposable income as their heterosexual peers, but they have no one to spend it on but themselves.
This is important when combined with another piece of news: the number of married adults with children living in the same household now make up a minority of the households in the United States.
Businesses go where the money is. As the number of families with children drops, the marketing and culture devoted to families with children will also necessarily drop. It is not cost-effective.
Every market specialist knows that twenty percent of the customer base brings in eighty percent of the business. Indeed, businesses that succeed recognize that they cannot aim to please every customer; rather, they must primarily aim to please the biggest spenders in their stores. The infrequent or penurious customer is not worth the money it costs to retain him.
Just as large companies often spin off and sell subsidiaries that are not generating enough profit, so those same large companies will ignore a customer segment that does not generate enough profit.
Customers can boycott stores, but stores can – by the way they market – also boycott customers. For many companies, married heterosexual adults with children are beginning to be a market segment that is simply not worth the trouble.
Indeed, it is in the interest of most companies to see these same families break up. It is easier to sell Happy Meals to overworked, single parents who don’t have time to cook than it is to sell those same Happy Meals to a stable, married couple with children, especially if one is a stay-at-home parent.
Walmart makes less and less money each year from families precisely because there are fewer and fewer families. So, as Walmart tries to transition to the big spenders, it holds one foot in the doorway of its traditional base. It starts to groom homosexuals while it throws a bone to the families. This is Walmart's gift to us: Merry Christmas.
From my point of view I would ban religion completely, even though there are some wonderful things about it. I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it, which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.
So says Elton John (whose statements above show he also keeps a foot in both doors, and in more ways than one), and who can argue? Compassion, as it is currently defined, means celebrating diversity while making sure all the diverse wallets empty into your own. Sure, the average homosexual may die an early, diseased, painful death, but he bought quite a few of the self-indulgent accoutrements for his death-style at our stores. There's compassion for you.
Walmart isn't the first to do this, it is among the last. It is caught between catering to a dying lifestyle (the family) and catering to the lifestyle of the dying (homosexuals). All the signs indicate the profit margin on the second is better, thus it would be immoral to harm shareholders by concentrating on the first. So, in true Calvinist Christian style, it pursues the largest profit margin as the most moral course. That's as close to Christian compassion as any corporation can expect to get.
“…the number of married adults with children living in the same household now make up a minority of the households in the United States.”
This overlooks the number of married adults without children in the same household — those adults who are now grandparents who are known to spend a lot of money on their grandchildren, even if their parents are divorced.
Somehow, I find it difficult to believe that the 2% of the population that is gay can outnumber the growing population of elderly with money to spend on their grandchildren.
I agree with the above, that survey does seem to be a bit off, in fact a whole lot off. As for the comments by Elton John I wonder he’s including the religion of Islam whose followers if they have their way will most likely make the gay and lesbian community disappear in a heartbeat.
The author also forgets the number of unmarried adults with children. There seem to be a lot of them in some quarters; particularly in LA County, California.
Oh please. What utter crap this is. Wal-Mart is a business. If you want to start your own discount “no homosexuals allowed” business, start it. You’ll find, of course, that you’ll go quickly out of business, because bad business is bad business.
Don’t like Wal-Mart? Don’t shop there. But you have no more business forcing your lifestyle addiction on Wal-Mart than the liberals do.
rightwingprof writes: “ . . . you have no more business forcing your lifestyle addiction on Wal-Mart than the liberals do.”
I didn’t read into this article that the author was trying to force his views on anyone; but since you mentioned it, what is “crap”, as you put it, is the liberal Left-wing notion that it’s wrong to force your concept of right and wrong on someone else when it’s done ALL THE TIME. Virtually every law ever passed represents someone’s concept of what’s right being forced on everyone else, and we all know how infamous Leftist liberals are for their incessant use of government to force what THEY believe to be right and good on the rest of society:
“Truth be known, the admonition against legislating morality is issued only when that morality happens to diverge from what’s fashionable, and by that I mean ‘politically-correct.’ It’s something certain people – usually those of a more liberal bent – warn about when the proposal involves morality that they don’t happen to like. For sure, not only do liberals – who are the authors of political-correctness – legislate morality, they do it with greater frequency and zeal than a Puritan moralist right out of 1650′s Massachusetts could ever muster. For, no one is more obsessed with imposing morality on others through government. Why, their works in this area are legion. For instance, anti-spanking laws are based on the supposition that it is immoral to strike your child, even for the purposes of enforcing discipline. Seatbelt, helmet (for motorcyclists), and child-restraint laws are based either on the idea that it is immoral to endanger yourself and others unnecessarily, or that it is immoral to take such risks and burden society with the possible consequences of such behavior. Legislation proscribing religious expression in the public sphere is based on the notion that it is immoral to expose people to such expression in publicly-funded institutions because some may find it offensive. Laws promoting quota systems are based on the idea that allowing a meritocracy that leads to inequality between groups is immoral. Now, whether or not you agree with some or all of these governmental impositions of morality is irrelevant. The point is that a law is a codification of morality, any which way you slice it. If a law weren’t a reflection of a value, there would be no value in having the law.” – Selwyn Duke
Finally, “We’ve depended on the courts as the vehicle by which we assert our interpretation of the Constitution.” – Roger Baldwin, Founder of the ACLU
How do you qualify the statment that: “the average homosexual may die an early, diseased, painful death” Of course it isn’t simply false because of the word “may”, but is it that likely that an American homosexual will die of AIDS? I’m a conservative and a Christian, I’m just wondering if anyone has statistical evidence to verify that this is more than an unlikely demise for an American homosexual. This statement, as well as others here, seem to imply that a substantial portion of American homosexuals die of AIDS.
What is the point of this article? A business that promotes to those who have money?? I believe most of this article is made up to justify one’s own prejudice and seriously doubt any of it can be taken seriously.
My husband has proudly worked for Wal-Mart for over twenty years. He has therefore witnessed the evolution of the company from the days when Mr. Sam Walton visited stores around the country and shook hands with his customers, to the present day of global commerce and an extremely diverse body of shoppers. Yes, the company is very different from its original roots, but it maintains the fundamental goal of bringing quality goods at competitive prices.
To compete (and succeed) in any market, it’s essential to acknowledge and acommodate the diversity of one’s customer base. The trick is to stay true to your word and maintain the values that built the company. I believe Wal-Mart is doing just that.