[boole1854]

Is that the "Walmart model"? Out of curiosity, I just checked their financial statements. For FY 2022, they had a gross profit margin of 25.1%. In comparison, for FY 1986 (the oldest year I have easy access to), they had a gross profit margin of 25.9%. That hardly seems to fit the pattern.

[ncallaway]

WalMart wasn’t doing it globally, they were doing it regionally or even city by city.

So, a store would open in a new city with very cheap prices. That individual store might be running at break even, or even at a loss. Once the various other local competitors have been driven out of business, they start to raise the prices, and become more profitable.

When competitors start coming back to town, they lower their prices and repeat.

Different individual stores would be in different stages of this at any time, so you wouldn’t really see the strategy by comparing various profit margins from different years, unless they were changing the rate at which they were in the expand phase.

[compiskey]

It used to cost X to run corp A, now it costs Y, where Y is Z times higher than X.

Millions to billions in this case.

Don’t forget to add in the cost of social programs their employees rely on given the abysmal pay in order to keep your numbers down.