Wal-Mart as A Monopoly in the Making

Through the dim mist of earliest morning, with everything still dark, a small town sleeps. It is 3 a.m., and nothing moves; even the town's dogs are asleep. Stores are closed, parking lots empty. A light is visible, through the mist, though. Upon closer inspection, the light is revealed to be a store Wal-Mart where the lights are on, customers are shopping, and cars are parked in the parking lot. Yes, while everyone else is sleeping including its competitors, Wal-Mart is awake and already making money for the day. When does this store close? Never. It is open 24/7, selling to the middle-of-the-night crowd, the morning crowd, the noontime crowd, the afternoon crowd, the evening crowd, and the late-night crowd. Everyday shoppers, commuters, holiday shoppers everybody shops at Wal-Mart.

Furthermore, there is not just one Wal-Mart. There are 4,750 of them (Bianco & Zellner). In fact, Wal-Mart is the world's largest company; it is a full three times the size of the second-largest retailer, France's Carrefour (Bianco & Zellner). It gets 138 million shoppers every week, and 82% of American households made at least one purchase at Wal-Mart last year (Bianco & Zellner). "In business, there is big, and there is Wal-Mart" (Bianco & Zellner). Ira Kalish, global director of Deloitte Research, says "There's nothing like Wal-Mart. They are so much bigger than any retailer has ever been that it's not possible to compare" (Bianco & Zellner)

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ack. In fact, "Wal-Mart's marketplace clout is hard to overstate" (Bianco & Zellner). The company commands approximately 30% of the U.S. market in household staples such as toothpaste and paper towels, and analysts predict that its share of such goods could reach 50% before the end of the decade (Bianco & Zellner). Furthermore, Wal-Mart controls "a large and rapidly increasing share of the business done by most every major U.S. consumer-products company:" 28% of Dial total sales, 24% of del Monte Foods, 23% of Clorox, 23% of Revlon, and on and on (Bianco & Zellner). Wal-Mart's increasing market share has created a situation verging on monopoly, where suppliers are growing increasingly dependent on Wal-Mart for survival: This is "a huge issue," not only for manufacturers but also for the U.S. economy�If [Wal-Mart] ever stumbles, we've got a potential national security problem on our hands. They touch almost everything�.If they ever really went into a tailspin, the dislocation would be significant and traumatic (Bianco & Zellner). The impact of Wal-Mart's business is so far-reaching that some critics argue that "Wal-Mart's intensifying global pursuit of low-cost goods is partly to blame for the accelerating loss of U.S. manuf

Category: Business - W