I was recently looking through a classmate Eddie’s blog, and came across and post about Wal-Mart that intrigued me. It outlined Wal-Mart’s recent decision to open up many ‘Wal-Mart Express’ convenience stores. This idea was very interesting to me. Wal-Mart has founded it’s success on its size, being able to offer consumers all of their needs in one place, at a discounted price, and driving Mom and Pop retailers into bankruptcy. Now, Wal-Mart is coming after dollar stores and convenience stores as well, and is going to be able to offer consumers everything they need, whether its a big shop at their regular locations, or a quick run into one of their express locations. I agree with Eddie that this will be a successful venture for Wal-Mart. However, I cant help but think that Wal-Mart will soon be taking over, driving out all of its competitors by using its known strategy of predatory pricing (see one of my earlier blog posts for more info on this).

Recently, a friend from out of town was visiting, and we were looking to go out for Indian food. While looking for places online, and found two Indian restaurants side by side on Granville street, and were wondering what the difference between the two was. After looking into it a little more, we realized that the two restaurants were owned by the same people, and the difference was the pricing of the menu. One restaurant was average pricing with dishes ranging from $8-$15, and the other was more expensive, with dishes between $20 and $30.

This got me thinking back to a lecture we had on cannibalization. The concept of cannibalization is when you give the consumer too many choices, you are essentially competing with yourself and your products are taking away market share from each other. However, I think the business model of these two Indian restaurants is a very interesting one with a high potential for success. The two restaurants are not competing with each other, they are appealing to two very different markets. When deciding which one to go to, we did not have to think very hard. One of them was clearly more in our price range (in case you weren’t sure, we were more $8/dish kind of people), and the other was totally out of the picture. By appealing to two different markets, the restaurant owners are able to capture the whole market, and one restaurant is not taking business away from the other.

If you are interested in these two restaurants, here are the websites for Vij’s and Rangoli, both located on 11th and Granville.