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Vicious cycle

Vicious circle still works to mean a chain of events which affects one another and progressively make the whole situation worse and worse. But vicious cycle seems to be more often used today, because it makes immediate sense.

Vicious cycle is American, by the way, according to some dictionaries. The Americans prefer simple and straight forward idioms to those that don’t make immediate, literal sense.

I see today’s youngsters are all like that. They cannot see beyond the obvious but they’re onto something – perhaps the American way.

And that, in so far as what we’re immediately concerned with in this article is neither here nor there.

Alright, here are media examples of vicious circle or vicious cycle:

1. The business model developed by Sam Walton in the 1960s to attract shoppers used low costs to lower prices. The more shoppers, the more efficient Walmart got, letting it lower prices further and attract even more shoppers. This is the famous “productivity loop,” and it’s pretty simple.

But it’s increasingly hard to pull off in the U.S., where Walmart’s namesake chain delivered its ninth consecutive quarter of declining same-store sales last quarter. Its prices have been rising relative to competition, as CEO Mike Duke acknowledged last week.

So what happens when a brand built on low prices doesn’t have such low prices anymore? People notice. That’s caused some to buy less, particularly in a bad economy. So the productivity loop has morphed into a vicious circle.