Wal-Mart Facts

[ayyon2157]

Hello Kathyp:
      Not being argumentative at all, and always welcome being  shown the error of some of my beliefs, I would appreciate very much having pointed out exactly what  all is wrong in my post.  I really didn't think I was critiszing WALMART, at and I certainly don't feel any animosity toward them.

thanks

ayyon2157 

[kathyp]

sorry, that was a little rude of me. 

the stores that you mentioned had gone under, or at least down in market shares, had problems other than greed of owners.  they had management that failed to keep up with changing markets and marketing, failure to control labor costs, failure to jump into expanding markets while over extending in the old ones.  when towns began to put a mall every 10 miles they wanted these stores as anchors, but do you really need a sears, penneys, and wards all in the same mall and every 10 miles?  probably not.  kmart had the same problem and they compounded it by trying to upgrade to super stores in competition with walmart, but without the business sense that allowed walmart to expand.

i don't know that there is an error in your beliefs.  you kind of sounded like you thought walmart would kill itself with corruption, or something.  it might well do that and perhaps someone will come up with a better idea.  you'd almost hope so, or we would seem to be stagnant?

i am not a fan of "fair trade" laws or government intervention in markets.  the government subsidies in agriculture are nuts.  let the market decide what we pay and who survives.  we all end up stronger for it.

[cidersabuzzin]

The point I was making, to use your obvious dislike of federal government is, in the business world substitute walmart for the federal government. When some thing gets too big that's when the absolute power etc kicks in. A company the size of walmart could cripple local economies, say they found it more profitable to buy only New Zealand wine (very good it is too!) what would that do to Californian wine makers? Very simplistic I know but that's what I mean by something being too big maybe for its own good. I agree they may be undermined by other companies. Woolworth's in the UK ended up in administration, shut the complete chain down  and sold the stores off, they got extremely large and lost their way.