Yes, they do. If they didn't want lower prices, they probably wouldn't be shopping at WalMart.
Maybe I missed where consumers were picketing stores demanding cheaper lawn sprinklers, but I doubt it.
If customers really don't care, you should be able to make a killing selling higher priced products made in the US, or at least not China. But customers by their actions indicate that they really do like cheaper lawn sprinklers.
And I don't demand higher profits where it leads to the evisceration of the American manufacturing base
US manufacturing output keeps rising, albeit with fewer workers due to large productivity increases.
Well, there are no Wal-Marts near me, so I'll cede to your first hand knowledge that Wal-Mart customers have been swamping the customer service counter demanding cheaper lawn sprinklers. I had no idea.
Your statement that "US manufacturing output keeps rising, albeit with fewer workers due to large productivity increases" is difficult for me to respond to, because there are multiple measures of manufacturing output. Please provide a reference for your statements. I like facts.
One fact I can share - in my business I've spent over two decades working with closing manufacturing plants. I've seen an incredible diversity of plants close - automotive, abrasives, primary aluminum production, pulp and paper, battery manufacturing, ship building, parts, chemical manufacturing, forest products, semiconductor...
The list goes on. Manufacturing in the U.S. is declining. There's no question of that in my mind. I've walked too many ghostly hulks where previously thousands of Americans worked and supported their families.
It's very sad.
And it's getting worse.
The problem with your construction of this is that the customers oftentimes don't know how the prices got lowered when it comes to Walmart.
The other thing you fail to mention is money and choice. When you destroy local competition that was paying higher wages, you remove money from the local economy - deminishing the overall cash flow in that economy. You also lower the wage because Walmart replaces the higher wage local jobs with lower wage Walmart jobs.. the very thing they used in helping destroy the local competition. The lower wage rate and lowered available cash flow in the community then makes the lower price the only one which the average person can afford on the new lower wage. The reality is that in the current slash and burn climate that has prevailed, the operational approach has been to cut, cut, cut. Benefits, pay, hours, etc in the name of stock price. Business seems to have awakened to the fact that you can only cut so far before you have to look for other ways of making higher and higher profits and stock dividends. They turned their back on loyalty and cut the American worker to 0 in order to make a buck. And as another has so eloquently put it here, Walmart is forcing that to happen.
Walmart is actively forcing companies to move or close down. They destroyed Rubbermaid with their tactics - a Giant in american industry and a Fortune 500 company. And Walmart destroyed them. Interesting that after they did, Chinese businessmen came here and bought the remains to take back to China. IMHO, Walmart used to be a success story that was worth telling. Today, they are an enemy of America because in the corporate world, they have no moral grounding and no loyalty to anything but a dollar. The dollar has become their state and state religion.