In a Bloomberg News interview, Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez denied recent claims by critics that Walmart’s online book discounting could be seen as “predatory pricing.”
He explained in the article: “Generally the issue is whether or not you are intending to use pricing to drive someone out of business … That’s not our intent. We’ve been the price leader in books for months before that program was announced.”
Walmart (WMT) recently slashed book prices online, dropping the cover price of the top 10 pre-selling titles to $10 apiece. This move touched off a book discounting war in between Amazon.com (AMZN), Walmart, and finally, Target (TGT). Financial reporter James Surowiecki called these predatory pricing claims “dubious” in a New Yorker blog post.