Abstract

Eight Ways to Stop the Store

This article focuses on the grand opening of a Wal-Mart retail store, from Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in New Hampshire. The Arkansas mega-retailer has emerged as the main threat to Main Street, U.S. Economic impact studies in Iowa, Massachusetts and elsewhere suggest that Wal-Mart's gains are largely captured from other merchants. Within two years of a grand opening, Wal-Mart stores in an average-size Iowa town generated $10 million in annual sales-by "stealing" $8.3 million from other businesses. Wal-Mathematicians only know how to add. They never talk about the jobs they destroy, the vacant retail space they create or their impact on commercial property values. Wal-Mart always makes plenty of mistakes. The company tried to push its way onto industrially zoned land. Wal-Mart spent more than $30,000 trying to influence the outcome of a general referendum. It even created a citizen group as a front.