“Costco Made a Huge Mistake Just Like Walmart and Target” – David Kline
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/costco-faces-same-problem-as-walmart-target
When I first read the headline, I was immediately stricken by its sense of vagueness. I was compelled to ask questions like “What is the issue? How will it affect me as a consumer?” I wondered why the headline felt so enticing in a sea of countless headlines that Apple News presented me. I realized that the word choice was obviously the driving force behind this sense of vagueness and gravity. Words like “huge mistake” contain serious connotations that awaken a sense of worry, which is combined with a lack of details to arose a curiosity. Also, its referencing of big corporations like Costco, Walmart, and Target immediately amplifies this curiosity, especially to their frequent shoppers (which is a very big population).
This also lead me to wonder, if they all made the same “huge” mistake, then why is Costco the only corporation emphasized. Why isn’t it “Walmart made a huge mistake just like Costco and Target”? What is the significance of making Costco the subject of the action? All of these questions serve to further inspire curiosity in the reader, and it certainly worked on me. But before I dove into the article, I did a quick check on the author. Daniel Kline is an active writer and editor for The Street, which is a news website that focuses on business, financial, and market data. Kline seems to have a background in reporting on retail and consumer goods, which makes sense given the article. Given this, I concluded that the article is meant to reach people with prior knowledge on market data and economics. Which, after reading the article, I felt justified in this conclusion.
So what exactly was the huge problem? It was stock shortages and overages on, specifically, seasonal goods. In hindsight, this did not feel like an “urgent” article for a consumer to read, which was how the headline made me feel. At first, it did push the narrative of urgency and “hugeness” when mentioning how COVID-19 impacted economical concerns of both consumers and businesses. However, this small factoid fizzled and fell flat, as it ended up going nowhere. As soon as the introductory section ended, Kline provided a very short synthesis on Walmart and Target’s supply issue on big televisions. Afterwards, the remainder of the article focused on Costco’s supply issue on Christmas trees and how they are handling it differently than Walmart and Target.
What happens here is that the audience is compelled to keep reading after mentions of COVID-19. Everyone remembers the supply shortages that the height of COVID-19 brought on necessary items, which left everyone in a frenzy. By referencing this, the author draws back some of that concern which is fuel for the audience to keep reading, even through the drawn out explanation of Costco’s Christmas tree problem.
However, I think here it is important to establish the opposing intentions which change only when target audience is considered. I found this article on Apple News, which a large portion of the population has access to. I had no expectations for this article due to its vagueness. The experience of the reader that I outlined above can only be, generally, attributed to readers that came from Apple News. A frequent reader of The Street, who might already have knowledge of markets and business discourses, would have experienced this article in a different light.