edit: Reading through the text and looking at the pictures, it's obvious that it's a third-party, but nothing on the site explicitly says "this is a seller not associated with Walmart".
Comparison:
Amazon: https://i.imgur.com/rGdTkM4.png
Walmart: https://i.imgur.com/JRwhzBy.png
Edit: Ahhh, of course. You're right, thanks guys.
The only reason I ever buy from Walmart is when I want the product the same day and am willing to drive 10 min to my local store. If that isn’t the case, I have the entire internet of sellers to choose from and it surely isn’t going to be Walmart that I pick.
Try buy a can opener that doesn't bend on first use or a wooden spoon in your local wal-mart, I dare you. It's just one step above DOLLAR GENERAL from where I'm sitting.
The kitchen equipment aisle is what comes to mind here - you can buy the cheap spoon for $.99 or you can buy the better one that doesn’t have the issues you describe for a few dollars more. Which one you buy is up to you.
We just bought a midrange quality ice cream scoop from Target locally, the thought process being that Target usually has higher quality items. Then later that same day we went to Walmart for some low quality disposable items and saw that exact ice cream scoop for a dollar less than Target. Oops.
I don't understand this complaint in this day and age. Can you point me to a brick-and-mortar store that has mostly high-quality long-lasting items?
But in terms of big-box retailers it has indeed become a depressing reality in the USA, ever since Sears closed down.
FWIW the last few times I abandoned hope in the kitchenware aisles of Wal-Mart I found something reasonable at Bed Bath & Beyond, a brick-and-mortar store. But it did admittedly require still splurging on basically top-of-the-line variants at BB&B. Such options were nowhere to be found in Wal-Mart though, not even close.
My impression is that the big-box retailers just don't go deep on the quality axis, they instead go wide on the quantity axis in terms of kinds of products. Within the ~quality axis they often just have cosmetically different looking dolled-up variants of more or less the same garbage with a higher price tag.
But if you go somewhere with a narrower scope like BB&B, you can at least find tangible differences along the quality axis. And they sure demand top-of-the-line prices for quality levels we once took for granted before China turned up the wick on this race to zero :(
I don't find buying stuff online instead of in person nearly as attractive a proposition as I used to. Whether that's just because of the negative experiences or just because of priority rebalancing after growing older, I have no way of knowing, but whenever I need to buy something I almost always look for it at several local stores first, either in-person or via the "pick up in store" option on their sites.
Granted, a similar argument could be made about eBay, so I think history plays a huge role. When Walmart puts up a marketplace for 3rd-parties without clearly disclaiming it as being from not-Walmart, Walmart's history and reputation as a direct seller customers lets a reasonable customer conclude that they are buying it directly from Walmart. eBay was never a seller themselves, and doesn't have Walmart's reputation, so products listed on eBay don't cause the same customer confusion.
I think the issue is that we'd need a regulation and one that clearly stipulates what the situation is. For example, one could propose that when a retailer that sells goods as a first party also provides a marketplace for third party goods, 10% of the page's size above the fold must be the third party's branding and that branding must be larger than the branding of the retailer. That would make it very obvious.
One of the issues that we're facing is that our regulations often don't specify enough of how something must be implemented. For example, sites must label their ads. Google used to make the ads have a different color background that made it easy to visually filter ads from organic results. Now they just write "Ad" in light grey (#aaadb2) against a gray background (#202124) with much less prominence and contrast than the title of the link. Twitter puts "Promoted" below the tweet rather than at the top of the tweet so that when you're scrolling you'll read the tweet before seeing that it's an ad (and it's rgb(113, 118, 123) (light gray) on black while the regular text is rgb(231, 233, 234) (nearly white) on black). The FTC does require that ads and sponsored content be clearly labeled, but doesn't really specify or enforce standards. I think if I labeled something as "Ad" as #aaadb2 on a #aaadb1 background, that clearly wouldn't pass muster. There'd be almost zero contrast. How much contrast is needed? How prominent should we require messages that clarify important things like this?
As you note, you're going to Walmart.com and giving your information to Walmart on a page where Walmart's logo and branding is basically all that you see - except for a tiny "Sold by XYZ" note. I don't know what the solution is entirely, but it's going to take regulatory action if we want to deal with this. If Amazon is doing it, Walmart will do it. If Google is limiting the contrast on how it marks ads, Twitter will also limit the contrast.
So many of our regulations and laws are designed under the assumption that time and attention are unlimited. Under such an assumption, misrepresenting the seller for 95% of the page is fine, because you'll notice the 5% that gives accurate information. Advertising designed to give false impressions are fine, because of course you'll notice that nothing was specifically claimed about a product. Terms of service and privacy policies are binding no matter how unnecessarily long they are, because you have unlimited time to sift through them.
But those assumptions are all clearly and blatantly untrue.
They do. Search target.com for some suitably generic thing like 'portable hard drive' and you'll see some are labeled like this: "Sold and shipped by Mega Retail Store a Target Plus™ partner"
That option is actually not always available for some reason (maybe if all of the options on the current page will be shipped from Amazon anyway)… but I always check it when it is and I don't want any shady sellers to be included.