Wal-Mart as A Monopoly in the Making
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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 townÆs 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 storeùWal-Martùwhere the lights are on, customers are shopping, and cars are parked in the parking lot. Yes, while everyone else is sleepingùincluding 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 shoppersùeverybody 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 worldÆs largest company; it is a full three times the size of the second-largest retailer, FranceÆs 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). ôIn business, there is big, and there is Wal-Martö (Bianco & Zellner). Ira Kalish, global director of Deloitte Research, says ôThereÆs nothing like Wal-Mart. They are so much bigger than any retailer has ever been that itÆs not possible to compareö (Bianco & Zellner)
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ack. In fact, ôWal-MartÆs marketplace clout is hard to overstateö (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 ôa large and rapidly increasing share of the business done by most every major U.S. consumer-products company:ö 28% of Dial total sales, 24% of del Monte Foods, 23% of Clorox, 23% of Revlon, and on and on (Bianco & Zellner).
Wal-MartÆs increasing market share has created a situation verging on monopoly, where suppliers are growing increasingly dependent on Wal-Mart for survival:
This is ôa huge issue,ö not only for manufacturers but also for the U.S. economyàIf [Wal-Mart] ever stumbles, weÆve got a potential national security problem on our hands. They touch almost everythingà.If they ever really went into a tailspin, the dislocation would be significant and traumatic (Bianco & Zellner).
The impact of Wal-MartÆs business is so far-reaching that some critics argue that ôWal-MartÆs intensifying global pursuit of low-cost goods is partly to blame for the accelerating loss of U.S. manuf
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Approximate Word count = 1532
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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