There were two stories in the past three days looking at grocery stores and prices. Reuters has a piece up about how grocers are on the defensive because of dollar stores. Such chains are expanding rapidly and capitalizing on consumers' frugality in the face of the difficult economic conditions. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal today had a piece about the positives of low grocery prices. That story's position is that deflation in food prices has made supermarkets more competitive with discounters and warehouse clubs.
So I'm confused. Are supermarkets doing better or worse?
Here are some other news and notes on retail and retail real estate from around the Web today.
- Another WSJ piece looked at the record quarter turned in by REITs. After several quarters of steep declines, REITs turned it around in the last three months. In the end, the quarter proved to be the best in the industry's history.
- There were two interesting RetailWire threads today. One looked at the Sears new buyer protection program, which we blogged yesterday. The other thread examined whether in-store shops are a problem for department stores.
- Retail Chatr asks,"How Long Until We See A Steady Stream of Distressed Real Estate Assets For Sale and How Hammered Will Non-Distressed Properties Get?"
- Calculated Risk posted its monthly Economic Summary in Graphs.
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