[Imports] Walmart import

[Paul Norman]

My experience here is based on Canadian stores, but I have been to 
plenty of US Wal-Marts.


On 12/15/2017 4:00 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> 2. In my particular example, there seems to be a pharmacy in OSM that is
> mapped separately, but also called "Wal-Mart". The import does nothing
> to the pharmacy. I don't know if all Wal-Marts have a pharmacy - the
> pharmacy POI is certainly within the Wal-Mart building. Is that a
> completely separate issue, or would e.g. your opening times information
> apply to the pharmacy as well?

It's reasonably common for large stores in North America to have a 
department inside which both has non-prescription medication (Aspirin, 
etc) as well as prescription medications. I asked a tagging question 
about these in 2010: 
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2010-December/003513.html, 
and the conclusions was that two objects was best - one for the overall 
store, and one for the pharmacy. In all the cases I've noticed, the 
opening hours were the same, but I'm told this is less often the case in 
the US.

For obvious reasons, the pharmacy can normally only be open when the 
overall store is open, but could have more restrictive hours. In those 
cases, the stuff which doesn't require interaction with a pharmacist 
often remains for sale whenever the store is open.


> 3. Personally I am a bit skeptical about the shop names; I see that in
> my example you are changing "Wal-Mart" to "Walmart Supercenter" and I
> assume that Wal-Mart will, like many other chains, have different
> classes of supermarkets and will have different trade names for these -
> super, hyper, metro, local, whatever. I'm not sure if these
> chain-specific denominations are really desirable to have in the name
> tag; they seem to me to be more a marketing tool than anything else. I
> have checked Google Street View for this particular Walmart bulding and
> the sign on the building just says "Walmart", not "Walmart Supercenter".
> I would probably be tempted to map it as such - i.e. "name=Walmart", not
> "name=Walmart Supercenter". (It's also easier on the map - a longer name
> runs a higher risk of being dropped due to space constraints.)

There's often an inconsistency in signage. Not from store to store, but 
within a store. I'd be inclined to not have Supercenter in the name tag, 
since that agrees with what they seem to be signing most often.