[thebears5454]

Dollar stores are certainly stealing a lot of Walmarts lunch in rural illinois and Iowa.

Why would you go 35min to Walmart if you just need 10 things when there's a dollar store 10 min away that's almost the same price as Walmart and much better shopping experience.

[jstarfish]

Yeah, and they're one of the reasons the poor stay poor. Dollar stores are a terrible value.

Walmart made a name for itself with its "rollback" program, where products would appear cheaper than competitors' because the SKU contained one less ounce/gram/unit. Dollar stores takes Walmart's own game to extremes; you buy a quart of watered-down bleach for $2, where buying an entire gallon (4x the volume) of the real thing would cost you $3 at Walmart.

Or, $20 for a 14-pack of Monster drinks at Walmart is a terrible deal when they're "just" $3 (each) at the gas station!

You see the same thing with people buying individual packs of cigarettes instead of an entire carton. The math works against them. They don't understand it.

[bobthepanda]

Sometimes it’s not about understanding.

There was a analysis, recently, that amongst users of the New York subway, the most common fare type amongst the poor was the pay per ride card. Even though it had the highest per-ride cost, it turns out that poor people living paycheck to paycheck simply cannot stump up the upfront cash to pay for the better deal. (As a result the new fare system combines both with automatic caps on pay as you go fares.)

[thebears5454]

You're missing the entire point of my comment.