Name: Behind Dollar General's Strategy to Dominate Rural America | The Economics Of | WSJ
Uploaded: 2022-09-11T16:04:56.000Z
Duration: 5 min 56 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It's a retailer that can make a lot of money

Adverbs of degree

- [Narrator] If you've ever shopped at a Dollar General,

you might've found the store on a remote road like this one.

to Dollar General's success in rural America.

The company is bucking current retail trends

- Dollar Generals go where Walmart's aren't.

- [Narrator] But it's not just the strategic locations

Dollar General employs a number of tactics

Including leasing stores, paying employees low wages,

And yes, that includes stuff that isn't really a dollar.

- Dollar General is almost something unto itself.

from a lot of different retailing models.

- [Narrator] This is the economics of Dollar General.

After more than 30 consecutive years of sales growth,

Dollar General has become one of the most profitable

So how has a store that sells products at rock bottom prices

- They add about two and a half stores every day

Just for scope, there's more than four times

as many Dollar Generals as there are Walmarts.

There's more Dollar Generals than there are McDonald's

more than $17,000 Dollar Generals in the US.

you might not have ever even stepped foot

- [Sharon] Where would you typically find a Dollar General?

Think of, you know, places where the houses are far apart,

farmlands, kind of lower income communities.

You might find them by a post office, or a church,

- [Narrator] This is often a deliberate decision.

The company has formulas for identifying locations

Often, the Dollar General will be down the road

miles away from the nearest town and Walmart.

serve communities of 20,000 people or less

that we might call a food desert, where there are not,

there's not a grocery store, there's not a big box store.

It's kind of target demographic is households

where it can get inexpensive real estate.

Dollar General tends to lease their properties

And inside the stores, it has a limited selection

which gives the company more buying power with suppliers.

Most Dollar General stores don't offer fresh produce.

Which have a shorter shelf life and bring in lower margins.

- [Sharon] You walk into a Dollar General,

You won't see a lot of people working there.

- [Narrator] By paying low wages to a minimal,

often part-time staff, the company keeps labor costs low.

is just over $16,000 according to Dollar General.

- These stores are staffed at minimum levels,

They pay closer to a gas station attendant

So it's people that much like their customer base,

people who live in an area where there aren't

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Behind Dollar General's Strategy to Dominate Rural America | The Economics Of | WSJ

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