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May 19th, 2007

Local stores that aren’t

One of the things that annoys me most is how chains will often try to market themselves as a “neighborhood” store, as if they had any real interest in the community. A place like Home Depot or Lowe’s is nothing like a mom-and-pop shop, so why do they even bother trying to latch onto that image?

Applebee’s is perhaps the worst with their terrible, terrible “Eatin’ good in the neighborhood” marketing campaign. Two less obvious options are Eat at Joe’s, a small seafood chain in the Northeast (?) that passes itself off as a roadside diner-type establishment and the Corner Bakery, which goes for the image of a tiny, family owned patisserie.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be annoyed by this, but I am. Can you think of any other regional or national chains that try to pass themselves off as the hometown small business?

Posted in Consumer Commentary

Jolene Peters May 20, 2007, 1:18 am

That’s Life, This is Walgreen’s! When I lived in a good area or an area that wsn’t full of crime, I shopped at Walgreen’s all the time where I lived in Irving, Texas for about five years. But since I moved back to Kansas City, Missouri a few years ago I have had enough time to get fed up with the Walgreen’s on my side of the river not to go to any of them. They try to make themselves sound like they are your corner drugstore and really care about you, but they don’t. For the last year we would go to the drive thru window waiting for a person to come to the window with our prescriptions and most of the time they were closed. The last time they didn’t bother to come to the window but they were open. The excuses for being closed was they were short staffed when they had about 4 people working in the pharmacy. So I took my business elsewhere. And also they never know where anything is or what anything is you ask them about. Everytime I would go in there, the girls at the perfume counter would ask if they could help me find something in their department. When I told them what it was that I was looking for they acted like they didn’t know what I was talking about. And nobody at Kmart or Walgreen’s or CVS or any of these stores seems to know what in the world it is that makes your Christmas lights blink off and on. The Walgreen’s I went to in Texas, a person who worked there knew what it was and sold me the little green plug that I needed for like $1.99! Good luck finding him again or the little green plug!

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