Somewhere I read a quote from some cranky business analyst complaining about how the low prices, quality products and high wages impact profits. "It's better to be a Costco customer or Costco employee than it is to be a Costco shareholder."
To which I responded "That sounds like a well run company!"
In 2005 my wife and I lived in a part of the USA that had no Costco within a half day's drive. We soon secured jobs in a part of the USA that had two (two!) Costcos in the same city that we would live. True story - before we even looked for housing, I went online and joined Costco. Years later my diabetic cat even had a Costco pharmacy account (best place to buy insulin by far) and received a discount for being without health insurance.
I have a Costco account and a Sam's Club (Walmart's Costco equivalent) account. Even though I do something like 98% of my bulk shopping at Sam's club (due to proximity, the Costco is ~ 15 min drive away vs 5 mins for the Sam's club), it's still worth it for me to hold the Costco membership for specific purchases. Notably I've purchased (because there's no better place to buy these things and the vendor vetting is amazing) bedsheets, smart thermostats & a sauna from Costco over the last year and those have easily made back the $60 USD it cost me to buy the membership. I'll probably end up buying a gazebo kit from Costco sometime in the next year.
I think for semi-big purchases ($USD 200 to $USD $20,000) as a consumer Costco has huge value. The vendor vetting thing may not be as important when it comes to a bag of chips, but when it comes to a $4,000 gazebo or some $2,000 appliance I have really come to trust Costco's vetting.
> Years later my diabetic cat even had a Costco pharmacy account (best place to buy insulin by far) and received a discount for being without health insurance.
IIRC, you don't need a membership to:
• shop at the pharmacy
• buy alcohol
• eat at the food court
I believe the first two are due to govt regulations, and may only apply in certain states.
It's also much easier for anyone to shop at Costco with a spouse's/friend's membership card now that they have self-checkout. You used to have to worry about the cashier flagging you if the cardholder wasn't there, but now there's no one who even looks at your card.
Related to the story's underlying topic, as an immigrant I find significant attitudinal/philosophical differences in how I regard saving money and spending money versus, for example, my American coworkers and friends, especially younger ones who grew up around relatively well-off families. Maybe the affection for Costco embodies that. I'm sure I sound like an old fart for saying this, like "those younguns don't know the value of a dollar any more".
By comparison at least, they are much freer with their money and don't have the same baggage about it. An example especially apparent for me is their willingness to spend on clothing, where I just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe just not having been brought up around parents who were ever dressed that nice, or allowed me and siblings to be. Or for example, their lack of concern about overpaying for small things, which yes in the bigger picture, who cares if you're overcharged for a drink once in a while?
I suppose it's because the information or concern about not having money was already passed down or imposed on me as a lesson early in life (whether intentionally or not). Sometimes I view it as an advantage as I see that my friends (those spending freely) will encounter those lessons when they get married, have kids, etc. and need to save. On the other hand, I wonder if I'm just handicapping myself with that baggage and not allowing myself to enjoy the freedom that a good income now brings, and living too much in the restraints of my family's past...
Haven't read the piece yet, but I definitely will - for a long time I would like to understand why people are so enamored with Costco. I recently joined because they have some good food that is hard or more expensive to find elsewhere, but that's about it. To me it's just a store. Outside of the US/Canada I've never seen people evangelize a store so much.
My great grandfather moved to a different part of Asia and never went back. My grandfather moved elsewhere and never went back. My mother moved to another continent and then later, with my father, to a third, where I partially grew up. And I moved to yet another continent (with another emigrée), speaking a language that, like my mother, I had learned after growing up.
Yet today I spoke English with a stranger, a woman born to Indian immigrants and she spoke with the same hand gestures I do.
I enjoyed this piece immensely. Might be a "missing the forest for the trees" thing, but it was odd needing to scroll so far down for a comment that grok'd the theme of the article, instead of chiming in on discounted gas and Kirkland vodka.
My favorite Costco is in Iceland: a place where things are normally absurdly expensive, and Costco Iceland is merely somewhat expensive. Arrive, stock up on food for a week (to supplement with restaurants, but some savings). Costco Japan would be really fun to visit too (haven't yet).
Also Costco + Internet (Amazon, B+H, etc.) are essentially 99% of my shopping here in Puerto Rico.
Visiting Costco, Walmart, etc. immediately after returning from war zones with limited supplies is a pretty shocking experience; I can only begin to imagine what it's like for someone new to the country who is actually from such a place.
Costco in Japan is great. Even without an American sized fridge and freezer it is definitely worth shopping at. It’s by far the cheapest place to buy American snacks, bacon, good peanut butter, tortillas, brown sandwich bread and kind of the only place to buy bulk. It’s an hour away from me and requires a car rental but it’s easily worth going once every 2-3 months.
As a child of AAPI immigrants, this piece really hit home, especially when the author mentioned how the struggles of her parent’s generation impacted the way she was raised.
I’ve always had a gut feeling that Costco’s customers represent a broader swath of socioeconomic diversity than most other stores. Don’t know how true that is and would love to learn if there’s real data behind it.
Business Insider hired an analytics firm named Numerator to create a report that finds on the average Costco customer [0]. I couldn't find the original data or report in Business Insider's summary, but from its article:
"Numerator found that Costco's typical shopper in the US is an Asian American woman between 35 and 44 years old who is married and living in a city in the Pacific Northwest. (Costco was founded in Seattle and is based in Washington.) She typically has a four-year degree or higher level of education and earns more than $125,000 a year."
I'm not sure whether the income of the "typical shopper" was defined based on a median or mode, so there could well be a large variance of customers with a lower socioeconomic status. A separate article by Investopedia [1] also asserts that Costco mostly opens stores in affluent suburban areas, and originally targeted college-educated and financially wealthier customers.
So, Costco's customers are likely skewed to have a higher socioeconomic status, based on the location of most of its stores in wealthier suburban areas and findings from an analytics report (with some skepticism towards the article about the report, as the raw data and methods weren't shared, as far as I could see).
Minor anecdotal evidence, but I live in a small semi-rural/semi-suburban town in NJ, and Costco appears to have a full cross-section of people. It does seem slightly more economically-diverse than the regular grocery and retail stores, in that you'll see a lot more rich people (by virtue of driving Porsches and Mercedes) at Costco than you will at Walmart.
As a native born and poor American without any parents I feel the same way going to Costco. Its miraculous.
After being homeless a few times as a native born American I still feel like showers are the ultimate luxury.
I'm always happy to see immigrants with jobs in America and Europe but I can't help but wonder what can we do to make other countries as desirable as America?
Theres billions of people. Why aren't their countries desirable as well?
Why is North America and Europe the main destination for the entire world to wish to immigrate to?
Why doesn't almost any country in Africa South and Central America, Asia, and India continents have immigration problems and what can we all do to make it desirable for people to want to be in their homes?
Because they are higher trust societies with less low level corruption, allowing one to have more peace of mind in day to day life.
Simply going out in a vehicle is magnitudes riskier in the country my parents come from. My whole extended family can afford maids, cooks, and drivers, yet they all moved because they wanted a lower volatility life for their children, even if it meant doing your own laundry, cleaning, cooking, and driving.
> what can we all do to make it desirable for people to want to be in their homes?
Great book on the subject is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail It explores precisely this phenomenon - why certain places that have geographic proximity (Dominican Republic and Haiti, Nogales AZ and Nogales Sonora) drifted so far away from one another economically, why some places with vast natural resources (Nigeria) are undesirable while some other countries with limited natural resources (Japan, Singapore) are economic successes.
Here is an unscientific explanation. NA and EU are populated by older souls: some of them see the value of giving, while others, who've chosen the wrong path, are adepts at scheming; but both are similar in their maturity. The less mature souls are still busy with mastering their emotions and their nations are too chaotic for this reason: they either fall apart without a leader, or when a mature leader presents itself, they have to be ruled by an iron fist (China, India). Eventually the focus will shift to another place on Earth: the most advanced will move on there and America will join the long list of empires that were once great, but that event is still a thousand years away.
See e.g. National IQ and Economic Development: A Study of Eighty-One Nations, by Lynn and Vanhanen.
There is a superlinear relationship between average IQ and GDPPC.
Research precludes a predominant causal relationship from GDPPC to IQ (e.g. via Flynn effect); all that is left is that population intelligence causally precedes GDPPC.
> Why doesn't almost any country in Africa South and Central America, Asia, and India continents have immigration problems and what can we all do to make it desirable for people to want to be in their homes?
Some countries do have immigration problems and emmigration problems. If they're more desirable than nearby countries, but not nearly as desirable as US/EU, then they'll pull in their neighbors, potentially too much at times, but still have those with resources leaving when they can.
IMHO, things people are looking for are physical safety, political stability, economic stability and opportunity, legal stability (rule of law, predictable courts, timely access to courts, reasonable law enforcement).
The top reasons people I hear people say they come to the US are because it's unsafe for them where they live, or to have the opportunity to make more money.
> Theres billions of people. Why aren't their countries desirable as well?
Because whenever they have political systems that promote stability or justice, those leaders are overthrown in favor of those who will obey diktaks of the IMF/World Bank/WTO which generally promote privatization and wealth concentration.
So other countries are desirable but have low social/economic mobility.
I guess everyone else read Costco in the title and stopped. But my parents are from the same generation (also from Fuzhou, no less) and this was heartbreaking to read. Mine never explicitly mentioned going hungry, it was just implied. I also have an aunt (the eldest) who lost years of her life working on a farm in the countryside. It was forced by the state, not a decision made by her parents. She only returned home after she had a very severe case of malaria.
Apparently Microsoft keeps the domain for contoso.net and contoso.com registered and its mx receives a vast quantity of mail from misconfigured things out in the wild.
In the last 20 years, I did several jobs. The jobs I was happiest in were those where my boss was a loyal Costco shopper. I dont know if the two are connected.
I am amused by how clear it is to spot those that didn't even bother to open the link. All of them, no exceptions, could be summarized as "I am completely ignorant of what's actually being talked about and I am not really inclined to dig deeper into it. Anyway, let me interject with my worthless opinion and find a way to make this about me."
But then again, perhaps this could be a meta-commentary about how American hyper-individualism makes everyone's worldview so small that they can not see anything but themselves, and yet this somehow "works"?
Costco will open in Sweden soon. On the opposite part of Stockholm from where I live, so I don't think it will be useful for me. I don't know much about it but I am excited to see what it will bring, and if it will affect the general grocery market around here.
I love Costco for many of the reasons people are citing here, but I didn't have a membership until very recently because the store is a bit useless if you don't have a car and a pantry. I really wonder how well they'll do in dense European cities where those aren't the norm.
Hmmmm I wonder if they will try the bulk model. Americans have very large fridges and grocery shop once a week. Grocery stores are often a 20-30 minute drive away. In my European country people have small fridges and may buy groceries several times per week. Grocery stores are a 5-10 minutes away.
The thing that will be interesting to see as well is how they approach a market where delivery has been increasingly important over bulk availability. Thinking about prices of services like MatHem and picsmart etc and if they can shake it up
Stockholm is a horrible place to live long term. You are basically banned from owning a car, but there are no convenient connections to huge shopping centers like Kungens Kurva (and stores likes IKEA doesn't offer delivery for most items!) and huge retail/warehouse stores like Biltema.
Appliances shipped from Costco.com are in their original packaging. They usually come with damages. I have had a couple items that I had to bring them back to the store to return.
Another thing is how they choose which items to sell at a particular warehouse. I used to visit one to buy a Sony Bravia 77" OLED and was told that the model was only sold at locations with high-income neighborhood.
Other than that, they have a way to get my money. It seems like we go there every week or so.
[+] [-] seanc|3 years ago|reply
To which I responded "That sounds like a well run company!"
[+] [-] W-Stool|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SOLAR_FIELDS|3 years ago|reply
I think for semi-big purchases ($USD 200 to $USD $20,000) as a consumer Costco has huge value. The vendor vetting thing may not be as important when it comes to a bag of chips, but when it comes to a $4,000 gazebo or some $2,000 appliance I have really come to trust Costco's vetting.
[+] [-] gnicholas|3 years ago|reply
IIRC, you don't need a membership to:
• shop at the pharmacy
• buy alcohol
• eat at the food court
I believe the first two are due to govt regulations, and may only apply in certain states.
It's also much easier for anyone to shop at Costco with a spouse's/friend's membership card now that they have self-checkout. You used to have to worry about the cashier flagging you if the cardholder wasn't there, but now there's no one who even looks at your card.
[+] [-] kepler1|3 years ago|reply
By comparison at least, they are much freer with their money and don't have the same baggage about it. An example especially apparent for me is their willingness to spend on clothing, where I just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe just not having been brought up around parents who were ever dressed that nice, or allowed me and siblings to be. Or for example, their lack of concern about overpaying for small things, which yes in the bigger picture, who cares if you're overcharged for a drink once in a while?
I suppose it's because the information or concern about not having money was already passed down or imposed on me as a lesson early in life (whether intentionally or not). Sometimes I view it as an advantage as I see that my friends (those spending freely) will encounter those lessons when they get married, have kids, etc. and need to save. On the other hand, I wonder if I'm just handicapping myself with that baggage and not allowing myself to enjoy the freedom that a good income now brings, and living too much in the restraints of my family's past...
[+] [-] lbrito|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
Yet today I spoke English with a stranger, a woman born to Indian immigrants and she spoke with the same hand gestures I do.
[+] [-] smugma|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] permo-w|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] godelmachine|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bobsmooth|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiscariot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggm|3 years ago|reply
Great writing. Good read.
[+] [-] RainaRelanah|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|3 years ago|reply
Also Costco + Internet (Amazon, B+H, etc.) are essentially 99% of my shopping here in Puerto Rico.
Visiting Costco, Walmart, etc. immediately after returning from war zones with limited supplies is a pretty shocking experience; I can only begin to imagine what it's like for someone new to the country who is actually from such a place.
[+] [-] johnwalkr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostmsu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wude935|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayarnty|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] divbzero|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] insightcheck|3 years ago|reply
"Numerator found that Costco's typical shopper in the US is an Asian American woman between 35 and 44 years old who is married and living in a city in the Pacific Northwest. (Costco was founded in Seattle and is based in Washington.) She typically has a four-year degree or higher level of education and earns more than $125,000 a year."
I'm not sure whether the income of the "typical shopper" was defined based on a median or mode, so there could well be a large variance of customers with a lower socioeconomic status. A separate article by Investopedia [1] also asserts that Costco mostly opens stores in affluent suburban areas, and originally targeted college-educated and financially wealthier customers.
So, Costco's customers are likely skewed to have a higher socioeconomic status, based on the location of most of its stores in wealthier suburban areas and findings from an analytics report (with some skepticism towards the article about the report, as the raw data and methods weren't shared, as far as I could see).
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-costco-shopper-demog...
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/061516/whats-...
[+] [-] caymanjim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edmcnulty101|3 years ago|reply
After being homeless a few times as a native born American I still feel like showers are the ultimate luxury.
I'm always happy to see immigrants with jobs in America and Europe but I can't help but wonder what can we do to make other countries as desirable as America?
Theres billions of people. Why aren't their countries desirable as well?
Why is North America and Europe the main destination for the entire world to wish to immigrate to?
Why doesn't almost any country in Africa South and Central America, Asia, and India continents have immigration problems and what can we all do to make it desirable for people to want to be in their homes?
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|3 years ago|reply
Simply going out in a vehicle is magnitudes riskier in the country my parents come from. My whole extended family can afford maids, cooks, and drivers, yet they all moved because they wanted a lower volatility life for their children, even if it meant doing your own laundry, cleaning, cooking, and driving.
[+] [-] throwamon|3 years ago|reply
Yup, that would be pretty nice. If only America would let them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
[+] [-] prostoalex|3 years ago|reply
Great book on the subject is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail It explores precisely this phenomenon - why certain places that have geographic proximity (Dominican Republic and Haiti, Nogales AZ and Nogales Sonora) drifted so far away from one another economically, why some places with vast natural resources (Nigeria) are undesirable while some other countries with limited natural resources (Japan, Singapore) are economic successes.
[+] [-] akomtu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyager|3 years ago|reply
See e.g. National IQ and Economic Development: A Study of Eighty-One Nations, by Lynn and Vanhanen.
There is a superlinear relationship between average IQ and GDPPC.
Research precludes a predominant causal relationship from GDPPC to IQ (e.g. via Flynn effect); all that is left is that population intelligence causally precedes GDPPC.
[+] [-] Panzer04|3 years ago|reply
If you have no assets, it’s also far easier to make money in a rich country and move back rich, rather than the reverse.
[+] [-] toast0|3 years ago|reply
Some countries do have immigration problems and emmigration problems. If they're more desirable than nearby countries, but not nearly as desirable as US/EU, then they'll pull in their neighbors, potentially too much at times, but still have those with resources leaving when they can.
IMHO, things people are looking for are physical safety, political stability, economic stability and opportunity, legal stability (rule of law, predictable courts, timely access to courts, reasonable law enforcement).
The top reasons people I hear people say they come to the US are because it's unsafe for them where they live, or to have the opportunity to make more money.
[+] [-] lbrito|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pm90|3 years ago|reply
Because whenever they have political systems that promote stability or justice, those leaders are overthrown in favor of those who will obey diktaks of the IMF/World Bank/WTO which generally promote privatization and wealth concentration.
So other countries are desirable but have low social/economic mobility.
[+] [-] frakkingcylons|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamiek88|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atlgator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notkurt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vxNsr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hillsboroughman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rglullis|3 years ago|reply
But then again, perhaps this could be a meta-commentary about how American hyper-individualism makes everyone's worldview so small that they can not see anything but themselves, and yet this somehow "works"?
[+] [-] mongol|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klyrs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unicornmama|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CorvusCrypto|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ArtemZ|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wistar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sntran|3 years ago|reply
Appliances shipped from Costco.com are in their original packaging. They usually come with damages. I have had a couple items that I had to bring them back to the store to return.
Another thing is how they choose which items to sell at a particular warehouse. I used to visit one to buy a Sony Bravia 77" OLED and was told that the model was only sold at locations with high-income neighborhood.
Other than that, they have a way to get my money. It seems like we go there every week or so.