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Its an understatement to say that cryptocurrency investors have not had a great week. Tokens across the board have seen double-digit falls, slashing thousands from their individual values. However, one of the most affected coins this week is also the worlds most popular cryptocurrency: Bitcoin. In the past five days alone, Bitcoins value has dropped more than 16%, and today, the coin fell below an important psychological barrier. Heres what you need to know about the likely reasons why Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are dropping. Bitcoin falls below $80,000 In early trading this morning, Bitcoin fell below the psychologically important $80,000 barrier. At the time of this writing, it is currently trading at around $79,900 per coin, though it had dropped to as low as around $78,400 earlier. When Bitcoin moves across a notable barrier like $60,000 or $100,000 (any increment of $10,000), it generally causes one of two reactions. If its move is increasing past the barrier, this tends to send optimism through the hearts of investorsHow high can it go? However, if its move falls under the barrier, this tends to generate fear and pessimismHow low can it go? What is startling about Bitcoins fall is that the coin was trading above $95,000 at the beginning of this week. But by Tuesday, Bitcoin had fallen below the $90,000 threshold. Now, just three days later, Bitcoin has fallen below $80,000. That means that as of the time of this writing, Bitcoin has lost about 16% of its value in the past five days alone. But it has gotten worse when looking out over the past month. During that time, Bitcoin lost more than 20% of its value. Bitcoin hasnt traded this low since shortly after President Trump won the election in November 2024. But its not just Bitcoin that is falling. Ethereum, XRP, DOGE, and TRUMP all down As of the time of this writing, other major cryptocurrencies and popular meme coins have all been down by a significant amount in the past day, according to data from Yahoo Finance and CoinMarketCap. Ethereum is down over 9% in the past 24 hours (and down over 24% in the past five days). XRP is down over 8.6% in the past 24 hours (and down over 20% in the past five days) Solana is down over 4% in the past 24 hours (and down over 20% in the past five days) Dogecoin is down over 10% in the past 24 hours (and down over 23% in the past five days) Official Trump is down over 13% in the past 24 hours (and down over 33% in the past seven days) Why are Bitcoin and other crypto dropping? When major assets drop, the first thing people want to know is why? Unfortunately, there are no firm answers to that, but there are two likely reasons why Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are seeing increased downward pressure this week. The first is Trumps tariffs. The president says he plans to levy tariffs on goods coming into the United States from many of Americas major trading partners, including Mexico, Canada, China, and EU member states. Those countries, in turn, are expected to retaliate with tariffs on American goods, which could result in an all-out trade war that leads to higher prices for consumers, more rapid inflation, and reduced household discretionary spending. In other words, people are worried that Trumps tariffs could negatively affect the economy. When the economy faces headwinds, investors tend to pull out of riskier and more volatile assetslike cryptocurrenciesin favor of placing their money into more stable assets. The second reason that may be contributing to cryptos fall this week is the ByBit hack from earlier this month that saw hackers steal $1.5 billion worth of cryptocurrencies. That heist, which is believed to be the largest ever crypto heist, has rattled crypto investors, making many feel that their cryptocurrency investments arent as secure as other investments, like stocks and properties. In other words, recent significant events are working against crypto’s favor. As for where Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies go from here, thats anyones guess.
Category:
E-Commerce
As President Donald Trump’s administration looks to reverse a cornerstone finding that climate change endangers human health and welfare, scientists say they just need to look around because it’s obvious how bad global warming is and how it’s getting worse. New research and ever more frequent extreme weather further prove the harm climate change is doing to people and the planet, 11 different scientists, experts in health and climate, told the Associated Press soon after word of the administration’s plans leaked out Wednesday. They cited peer-reviewed studies and challenged the Trump administration to justify its own effort with science. There is no possible world in which greenhouse gases are not a threat to public health, said Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb. Its simple physics coming up against simple physiology and biology, and the limits of our existing infrastructure to protect us against worsening climate-fueled extremes. EPA’s original finding on danger of greenhouse gases Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin has privately pushed the White House for a rewrite of the agencys finding that planet-warming greenhouse gases put the public in danger. The original 52-page decision in 2009 is used to justify and apply regulations and decisions on heat-trapping emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. Carbon dioxide is the very essence of a dangerous air pollutant. The health evidence was overwhelming back in 2009 when EPA reached its endangerment finding, and that evidence has only grown since then, said University of Washington public health professor Dr. Howard Frumkin, who as a Republican appointee headed the National Center for Environmental Health at the time. “CO2 pollution is driving catastrophic heat waves and storms, infectious disease spread, mental distress, and numerous other causes of human suffering and preventable death. That 2009 science-based assessment cited climate change harming air quality, food production, forests, water quality and supplies, sea level rise, energy issues, basic infrastructure, homes, and wildlife. A decade later, scientists document growing harm Ten years later, a group of 15 scientists looked at the assessment. In a paper in the peer-reviewed journal Science they found that in nearly all those categories the scientific confidence of harm increased and more evidence was found supporting the growing danger to people. And the harms were worse than originally thought in the cases of public health, water, food, and air quality. Those scientists also added four new categories where they said the science shows harm from climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Those were in national security, economic well-being of the country, violence, and oceans getting more acidic. On national security, the science team quoted Trump’s then-defense secretary, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and a Pentagon authorization bill that Trump signed in his first term. It also quoted a study that said another 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) of warming in the next 75 years would effectively reduce the U.S. gross domestic product by 3%, while another study said warming would cost the American economy $4.7 trillion to $10.4 trillion by the end of the century. Overall, the scientific support for the endangerment finding was very strong in 2009. It is much, much stronger now, Stanford University environment program chief Chris Field, a co-author of the 2019 Science review, said in a Wednesday email. “Based on overwhelming evidence from thousands of studies, the well-mixed greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health and welfare. There is no question. Long list of climate change’s threats to health There is global consensus that climate change is the biggest threat of our to time to both health and health systems, said Dr. Courtney Howard, a Canadian emergency room physician and vice chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. He ticked off a long list: heat-related illnesses, worsening asthma, heart diseases worsened by wildfire smoke, changing habit for disease-carrying mosquitoes, ticks and other insects, and crop failures that drive hunger, war, and migration. Kristie Ebi, a public health and climate scientist at the University of Washington, said a big but little-discussed issue is how crops grown under higher carbon dioxide levels have less protein, vitamins, and nutrients. That’s 85% of all plants, and that affects public health, she said. Field experiments have shown wheat and rice grown under high CO2 have 10% less protein, 30% less B-vitamins and 5% less micronutrients. It’s these indirect effects on human health that are far-reaching, comprehensive and devastating, said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy. She said rising carbon dioxide levels in the air even affect our ability to think and process information. Scientists said the Trump administration will be hard-pressed to find scientific justificationor legitimate scientiststo show how greenhouse gases are not a threat to people. This one of those cases where they cant contest the science and theyre going to have a legal way around,” Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said. The Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Seth Borenstein, AP science writer Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed.
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E-Commerce
Recently, I overheard a conversation at a local coffee shop:Thank god for the new administration and finally taking a stand against DEI, said one of the men to another, as they sipped their coffee. Its ridiculous and unfair, completely ruining work. We can finally get back to business.” I leaned in a bit further to try and listen in as I paid for my Earl Gray tea. Well . . . Im not sure thats entirely true, the other man said hesitating. I think that . . . Finally, we can get back to raising standards, the other individual interrupted. Its about time! By the way, are you going to the game next week? The other individual looked uncomfortable as the conversation swiftly shifted in a completely different direction. While I was done paying, and also done eavesdropping, I left knowing that what I heard in this local coffee shop was not an isolated conversation. The backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion is playing out on the national and world stage almost every single day. And the backlash is also taking place on much smaller stages, in conversations in our conference rooms and in our hallways, amongst colleagues loudly and in whispers in our workplaces. And in these conversations, theres an opportunity to talk and educate each other about what diversity, equity, and inclusion is and what diversity, equity, and inclusion is not. Here are three of the most common statements I am hearing from individuals for the case against diversity, equity, and inclusion, and heres how we can debunk these statements and continue to help educate each other on what is true and what is not. False argument against DEI: We lower our standards when it comes to talent Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not about lowering our standards; diversity, equity, and inclusion is about setting fair and equitable standards on how we evaluate all talent. The term DEI hire is being used to make us believe that we have lowered standards by hiring individuals from different backgrounds and different lived experiences. In reality, DEI hire is a harmful and a hurtful phrase that leads many to believe that someone was handed a job simply because they may look different or be different or are a quota hire. And it is increasingly becoming an acceptable way to discredit, demoralize, and disrespect leaders of color. One of the key outcomes of diversity, equity, and inclusion is creating standardized processes on how we hire talent, and also on who we choose to develop and promote. This includes using software tools like Greenhouse, which helps you ensure that every candidate for a role meets with the same set of interviewers, that interview questions are aligned in advance, and that theres a way to evaluate and score the interviews and debrief together as an interview team. Otherwise, we fall prey to our biases and may hire people who look like us, think like us, and act like us, or simply hire them because we really just like them. When it comes to how we develop and promote talent, software tools like Lattice help us ensure we set clear and reasonable goals for all, and not just some employees. We can then track progress in weekly meetings, we can give and receive coaching and feedback, and we can have a consistent framework when we evaluate talent during performance review time. And how we evaluate talent is also then connected to how we compensate individuals, and ultimately who we chose to promote. Without these standardized processes, we may end up giving better performance reviews and more money to those who are the most vocal, who spend the most time managing up to us, and who we just find ourselves having more in common with. Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts help us raise standards and make sure we are getting the best out of our talent. False argument against DEI: It distracts ourselves from driving revenue Diversity, equity, and inclusion does not distract us from leading our businesses; in fact, diversity, equity, and inclusion is a driver of the business. Its not a separate initiative that sits apart from the business; it should be integrated into everything we do in our workplaces. These efforts not only help us ensure that we get the best out of our talent, but it also ensures we are able to best serve our customers. According to Procter & Gamble, the buying power of the multicultural consumer is more than $5 trillion. Procter & Gamble reminds us that its no longer multicultural marketing; its in fact mainstream marketing. There is growth to be had when we ensure we connect and authentically serve not just the multicultural consumer, but also veterans, individuals with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community, and many more communities. Understanding their consumer needs and how your businesses products and services can surprise and delight them, and enhance the quality of their lives, is an untapped competitive advantage. Companies like E.L.F. understand this, with a strong focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts that have paid off: It has posted 23 consecutive quarters of sales growth. Over the past five years, the company has also seen its stock increased by more 700%. In contrast, since Target announced a roll back on its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, its experienced a decline in sales. Black church leaders are now calling on their congregations to participate in a 40 day boycott of Target. Black consumers have $2 trillion in buying power, setting digital trends and engagement. We’ve got to tell corporate America that there’s a consequence for turning their back on diversity,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, to USA Today. So let us send the message that if corporate America can’t stand with us, we’re not going to stand with corporate America. False argument against DEI: An inclusive work environment only benefits a few Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not about creating an inclusive environment for a select few. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is about creating workplaces where we all have an opportunity to reach our potntial and help our companies reach their potential. In my book, Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths to Transform Your Workplace, I tackle the myth that diversity, equity, and inclusion processes and policies only have a positive effect on a certain group of individuals. I share The Curb-Cut Effect which is a prime example of this. In 1972, faced with pressure from activists advocating for individuals with disabilities, the city of Berkeley, California, installed its first official curb cut at an intersection on Telegraph Avenue. In the words of a Berkeley advocate, the slab of concrete heard round the world. This not only helped people in wheelchairs. It also helped parents pushing strollers, elderly with walkers, travelers wheeling luggage, workers pushing heavy carts, and the curb cut helped skateboarders and runners. People went out of their way and continued to do so, to use a curb cut. The Curb-Cut Effect shows us that one action targeted to help a community ended up helping many more people than anticipated. So, in our workplaces, policies like flexible work hours and remote work options, parental leave and caregiver assistance, time off for holidays and observances, adaptive technologies, mental health support, accommodations for individuals with disabilities, and more have a ripple effect and create workplaces where everyone has an opportunity to thrive. Dont fall for the rhetoric against DEI being exclusive, unfair, or a distraction. The goal of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts has always been about leveling the playing field and ensuring we are creating workplaces where each and everyone of us have an opportunity to succeed.
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E-Commerce
The notion of authenticity in the movies has moved a step beyond the merely realistic. More and more, expensive and time-consuming fixes to minor issues of screen realism have become the work of statistical data renderingsthe visual or aural products of generative artificial intelligence. Deployed for effects that actors used to have to create themselves, with their own faces, bodies, and voices, filmmakers now deem these fixes necessary because they are more authentic than what actors can do with just their imaginations, wardrobe, makeup, and lighting. The paradox is that in this scenario, authentic means inhuman: The further from actual humanity these efforts have moved, the more we see them described by filmmakers as perfect. Is perfect the enemy of good? It doesnt seem to matter to many filmmakers working today. These fixes are designed to be imperceptible to humans, anyway. Director Brady Corbets obsession with perfect Hungarian accents in his Oscar-nominated architecture epic, The Brutalist, is a case in point. Corbet hired the Ukraine-based software company Respeecher to enhance accents by using AI to smooth out vowel sounds when actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones (American and British, respectively) speak Hungarian in the film. Corbet said it was necessary to do that because, as he told the Los Angeles Times, this was the only way for us to achieve something completely authentic. Authenticity here meant integrating the voice of the films editor, Dávid Jánsco, who accurately articulated the correct vowel sounds. Jánscos pronunciation was then combined with the audio track featuring Brody and Jones, merging them into a purportedly flawless rendition of Hungarian that would, in Corbets words in an interview with GQ, honor the nation of Hungary by making all of their off-screen Hungarian dialogue absolutely perfect. The issue of accents in movies has come to the fore in recent years. Adam Driver and Shailene Woodley were, for instance, criticized for their uncertain Italian accents in 2023s Ferrari. Corbet evidently wanted to make sure that would not happen if any native Hungarian speakers were watching The Brutalist (few others would notice the difference). At times, Brody and Jones speak in Hungarian in the film, but mostly they speak in Hungarian-accented English. According to Corbet, Respeecher was not used for that dialogue. Lets say that for Corbet this will to perfection, with the time and expense it entailed, was necessary to his process, and that having the voice-overs in translated Hungarian-accented English might have been insultingly inauthentic to the people of Hungary, making it essential that the movie sound, at all times, 100% correct when Hungarian was spoken. Still, whether the Hungarian we hear in The Brutalist is absolutely perfect is not the same as it being completely authentic, since it was never uttered as we hear it by any human being. And, as it turns out, it was partially created in reaction to something that doesnt exist. In his interview with the Los Angeles Times, Corbet said that he would never have done it any other way, recounting when he and his daughter were watching North by Northwest and theres a sequence at the U.N., and my daughter is half-Norwegian, and two characters are speaking to each other in [air quotes] Norwegian. My daughter said: ‘Theyre speaking gibberish.’ And I think thats how we used to paint people brown, right? And, I think that for me, thats a lot more offensive than using innovative technology and really brilliant engineers to help us make something perfect. But there is no scene in Alfred Hitchcocks 1959 film North by Northwest set at the United Nations or anywhere else in which two characters speak fake Norwegian or any other faked language. Furthermore, when Corbet brings in the racist practice of brownface makeup that marred movies like 1961s West Side Story, he is doing a further disservice to Hitchcocks film. The U.N. scene in North by Northwest features Cary Grant speaking with a South Asian receptionist played by Doris Singh, not an Anglo in brownface. Corbets use of AI, then, is based on something that AI itself is prone to, and criticized for: a hallucination in which previously stored data is incorrectly combined to fabricate details and generate false information that tends toward gibberish. While the beginning of Hitchcocks Torn Curtain (1966) is set on a ship in a Norwegian fjord and briefly shows two ships officers conversing in a faked, partial Norwegian, Corbets justification was based on a false memory. His argument against inauthenticity is inauthentic itself. AI was used last year in other films besides The Brutalist. Respeecher also corrected the pitch of trans actress Karla Sofía Gascóns singing voice in Emilia Pérez. It was used for blue eye color in Dune: Part Two. It was used to blend the face of Anya Taylor-Joy with the actress playing a younger version of her, Alyla Browne, in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Robert Zemeckiss Here, with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright playing a married couple over a many-decade span, deployed a complicated youth mirror system that used AI in the extensive de-agings of the two stars. Alien: Romulus brought the late actor Ian Holm back to on-screen life, reviving him from the original 1979 Alien in a move derided not only as ethically dubious but, in its execution, cheesy and inadequate. It is when AI is used in documentaries to re-create the speech of people who have died that is especially susceptible to accusations of both cheesiness and moral irresponsibility. The 2021 documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain used an AI version of the late chef and authors voice for certain lines spoken in the film, which provoked a striking degree of anger and unease among Bourdains fans, according to The New Yorker. These fans called resurrecting Bourdain that way ghoulish and awful. Dune: Part Two [Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures] Audience reactions like these, though frequent, do little to dissuade filmmakers from using complicated AI technology where it isnt needed. In last years documentary Endurance, about explorer Ernest Shackletons ill-fated expedition to the South Pole from 1914 to 1916, filmmakers used Respeecher to exhume Shackleton from the only known recording of his voice, a noise-ridden four-minute Edison wax cylinder on which the explorer is yelling into a megaphone. Respeecher extracted from this something authentic which is said to have duplicated Shackletons voice for use in the documentary. This ghostly, not to say creepy, version of Shackleton became a selling point for the film, and answered the question, What might Ernest Shackleton have sounded like if he were not shouting into a cone and recorded on wax that has deteriorated over a period of 110 years? Surely an actor could have done as well as Respeecher with that question. Similarly, a new three-part Netflix documentary series, American Murder: Gabby Petito, has elicited discomfort from viewers for using an AI-generated voice-over of Petito as its narration. The 22-year-old was murdered by her fiancé in 2021, and X users have called exploiting a homicide victim this way unsettling, deeply uncomfortable, and perhaps just as accurately, wholly unnecessary. The dead have no say in how their actual voices are used. It is hard to see resurrecting Petito that way as anything but a macabre selling pointcarnival exploitation for the streaming era. Beside the reanimation of Petito and the creation of other spectral voices from beyond the grave, there is a core belief that the proponents of AI enact but never state, one particularly apropos in a boomer gerontocracy in which the aged refuse to relinquish power. That belief is that older is actually younger. When an actor has to be de-aged for a role, such as Harrison Ford in 2023s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, AI is enlisted to scan all of Fords old films to make him young in the present, dialing back time to overwrite reality with an image of the past. Making a present-day version of someone young involves resuscitating a record of a younger version of them, like in The Substance but without a syringe filled with yellow serum. When it comes to voices, therefore, it is not just the dead who need to be revived. Fords Star Wars compatriot Mark Hamill had a similar process done, but only to his voice. For an episode of The Mandalorian, Hamills voice had to be resynthesized by Respeecher to sound like it did in 1977. Respeecher did the same with British singer Robbie Williams for his recent biopic, Better Man, using versions of Williamss songs from his heyday and combining his voice with that of another singer to make him sound like he did in the 1990s. Here [Photo: Sony Pictures] While Zemeckis was shooting Here, the youth mirror system he and his AI team devised consisted of two monitors that showed scenes as they were shot, one the real footage of the actors un-aged, as they appear in real life, and the other using AI to show the actors to themselves at the age they were supposed to be playing. Zemeckis told The New York Times that this was crucial. Tom Hanks, the director explained, could see this and say to himself, Ive got to make sure Im moving like I was when I was 17 years old. No one had to imagine it, Zemeckis said. They got the chance to see it in real time. No one had to imagine it is not a phrase heretofore associated with actors or the direction of actors. Nicolas Cage is a good counter example to this kind of work, which as we see goes far beyond perfecting Hungarian accents. Throughout 2024, Cage spoke against AI every chance he got. At an acceptance speech at the recent Saturn Awards, he mentioned that he is a big believer in not letting robots dream for us. Robots cannot reflect the human condition for us. That is a dead end. If an actor lets one AI robot manipulate his or her performance even a little bit, an inch will eventually become a mile and all integrity, purity, and truth of art will be replaced by financial interests only. In a speech to young actors last year, Cage said, The studios want this so that they can change your face after youve already shot it. They can change your face, they can change your voice, they can change your line deliveries, they can change your body language, they can change your performance. And he said in a New Yorker interview last year, speaking about the way the studios are using AI, What are you going to do with my body and my face when Im dead? I dont want you to do anything with it! All this from a man who swapped faces with John Travolta in 1997s Face/Off with no AI requiredand face replacement is now one of the main things AI is used for. In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Cage shared an anecdote about his recent cameo appearance as a version of Superman in the much-reviled 2023 superhero movie The Flash. What I was supposed to do was literally just be standing in an alternate dimension, if you will, and witnessing the destruction of the universe. . . . And youcan imagine with that short amount of time that I had, what that would mean in terms of what I could conveyI had no dialoguewhat I could convey with my eyes, the emotion. . . . When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider. . . . They de-aged me and Im fighting a spider. Now thats authenticity.
Category:
E-Commerce
Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture. Costco chair Hamilton Tony James caused a bit of a stir this week when, in an interview, he mentioned a retail category thats done surprisingly well for the big-box chain: luxury goods. “Rolex watches, Dom Pérignon, 10-carat diamonds, James offered as examples of high-end products and brands that have fit into a discount-club model more typically associated with buying staples in bulk. Affluent people, he explained, love a good deal. Courting that group may be particularly timely right nowand not just for Costco. According to a recent report from research firm Moodys Analytics, the top 10% of U.S. earners (with household incomes of $250,000 and up) now account for almost 50% of all spending; 30 years ago, they accounted for 36%. Moodys calculates that spending by this top group contributes about one-third to U.S. gross domestic product. While that reflects a serious squeeze further down the income ladder, where the price of eggs and other basics remain high, it also suggests that the comparatively well-off not only have money to spend, but theyre spending it. As of September, the affluent had increased their spending 12% over the prior year, while working-class and middle-class households had spent less. Thats having a clear effect on such sectors as travel, where the affluent have always been part of the mix but are now even more important. Delta recently reported that premium ticket sales are up 8%, much more than main-cabin sales. Bank of America found the most affluent 5% of its customers spent over 10% more on luxury goods than a year ago. Theyre going to Paris and loading up their suitcases with luxury bags and shoes and clothes, BofA Institute senior economist David Tinsley told the Wall Street Journal. For discounters and dollar stores targeting lower-income consumers, this has meant more competition for fewer dollars spent. (Dollar stores have struggled, and the discount chain Big Lots has filed for bankruptcy.) Addressing that challenge by courting the wealthy isnt an easy move, but Costco isnt alone in trying. Walmart CFO John David Rainey told Fox Business that the retail giant has expanded its selection of high-end Apple products, Bose headphones, and other items sought after by more-affluent customers,” as part of a stab at upleveling the Walmart brand. Of course, it may not be easy for most bargain-oriented brands to swiftly pivot, but Costco does seem to have more of a track record of pushing a more upscale-friendly element to its image. James noted that Costco has long counted affluent shoppers among its members36% of them have incomes of $125,000 and higher, according to consumer-data firm Numerator. A Coresight analysis from a couple years ago found that Costco customers have higher average incomes than those who shop at rival Sams Club, and thats reflected in its brand and product variety. Costcos reputation for serving that somewhat higher-income demographic makes the chain more attractive to brands that target those shoppers as well, Morningstar analyst Zain Akbari told CNBC. And of course it doesnt hurt that the chain has famously been selling gold and platinum bars. (Its also worth noting that Costcos business is doing well in general, not just with high-end customersand its reputation seems to have benefited from its reaffirmed commitment to DEI as a sound business practice.) Weve always known we could move anything in volume if the quality was good and the price was great, Costco’s James said, and that includes higher-end items that might seem like a stretch for a price-focused warehouse chain. In fact, he argued, its a natural part of the Costco brand: Both the company and its fans like to talk about the treasure hunt-feel of finding something unexpected thats not necessarily cheap, but a bargain. Were not interested in selling just anything at a low price, James added. If someone wants to buy a $500 TV for $250 at Costco, we want to sell them a $1,000 TV for $500 instead. Were always trying to find better items to sell to members, giving them a great deal. Were by no means a dollar store. It (almost) goes without saying that from a macro perspective, the massive wealth and spending-power imbalance underlying Moodys analysis points to potential problems that shifts in retail strategy wont solve: Consumer debt in delinquency is rising, and the whole economy is vulnerable if splurging by the affluent were to plummet. So while retailers will likely continue to chase after wealthier customers, the majority of consumers are left to treasure hunt for reasonably priced eggs.
Category:
E-Commerce
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