A long time ago and a short time ago. In a place both near and far away
the A&P was one of the largest grocery chains in the USA. They were in
every small town in the USA. My grandmother would go to the A&P and
after we would sit in the car for about 20 minutes and watch the people
walk by. In my small town we also had an A&P and they would leave the
donuts outside in boxes late at night for the next day. The A&P had
their own brand of coffee. My parents would go into the A&P and have the
A&P Coffee ground for them at the time of purchase. I never liked coffee
but I would love the smell of the coffee being ground into red bags for
the customer.
All of a sudden, A&P stores began to close and large chain store
supermarkets in malls outside of town took their place. I often wondered
what happened. A&P was everywhere and in every town. They had all the
customers and people were happy to go and shop. Then A&P was gone from
our town. I guest that the pundits will say it was mismanagement, they
were not current, or the changing business practices.
Marketing Application IMBALANCED
At this time when the change to strip malls was about to happen
in the USA the A&P was punished by the US Government for having private
labels. A&P's private labels were deemed to be in restraint of trade and
a form of monopoly. A&P could no longer sell their own A&P products and
coffee to their customers. This accomplished several things for those
economic interests that wanted to create and profit from new strip
malls. A&P lost the very profitable private label part of their
business. Now they were unable to sustain their local profitability
against their mall competitors. Without this profitability A&P was
rejected from the strip malls as not economically viable. A&P was then
be forced to stay in small towns and go out of business.
Someday the story will be told of how a major American company was
removed from competition by the actions of our government. Marketing and
business is made and broken by the power of government. All the
so-called marketing techniques they teach can never overcome this form
of government created market power. The question I would have asked is
did those that ran A&P know this and still could do nothing to bring it
to the attention of their customers?
Just like A&P today General Motors and Ford are in real harm of going
out of business because of government regulations. We all keep saying it
is the high cost of wages and health care? Could it be that the
government has been put into the position that we can no longer support
the American auto business in the United States?
Two reasons come to mind, one to continue to destroy the power of
unions. The destruction of unions has been a long term government policy to
break the middle class and bring our workforce in line with international
competition. The second reason could be to let the Chinese car market enter the
USA to compensate them for our incurred debts. We had to open our auto markets
to the Japanese car industry to pay back debt. We may also believe that the
Chinese can compete against the Japanese better than we can.
As long as the US military can enforce that our production
capabilities must remain in the USA we can take the production back from any
foreign owner intact in a time of war. 10/8/07