Wal-Mart benefits the poor

(Via Instapundit) Virginia Postrel has a long quote from a NY Times article which actually has some praise for Wal-Mart and debunks some of its critics. The bottom line:

The conventional criticism of Wal-Mart is that it's an insatiable capitalist juggernaut, reaping private benefit at the expense of the public good. The view retains some currency, I suspect, because many of Wal-Mart's critics haven't really shopped there.

The funny thing is that, for quite a while, this view has had the situation almost exactly backward. Instead of producing private benefit at public expense, Wal-Mart has been producing public benefit at private expense. And the equation is likely to become ever more lopsided.

I regularly shop for grocieries at Wal-Mart, Target and a couple nearby grocery stores. Because I generally tend to remember prices, I am fascinated by the stores which often make a big deal of a sale with slashed prices on some items when the lower prices are still higher than Wal-Mart's. It is also interesting to see the way that our Target grocery chooses to compete with the Wal-Mart located in the same strip mall. Target will match prices on a lot of items, but isn't even close on others. Target also works hard in the produce and deli areas to make the store extremely appealing visually. There are a lot of shoppers in my area who shop Target, but refuse to go in a Wal-Mart. But since Target does seem to lower prices on certain items to Wal-Mart levels, they obviously think that there are a lot of shoppers who feel otherwise.

I would love to see the psychological studies or theories that all these grocery stores rely upon for price competition decisions. Do most shoppers remember milk and egg prices while ignoring detergent and toilet paper, etc.?