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1.  

   Is Wal-Mart successful?

   

   dorpus, Dec 15th, 2004 @ 10:04am

   
   

   Here in Michigan, I never would have known that Wal-Mart is a successful chain. The local retail landscape is dominated by Meijer supercenters, with their 24-hour supermarket + general merchandise. The only Wal-Mart here is in an undesirable location far away from town, the store is small and dirty, and only poor people with unpleasant attitudes shop there. Meijers has self-service cashier stations, but Wal-Mart does not. Locally at least, Meijers beats Wal-Mart at their own game.
   

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2.  

   Michigan WalMart

   

   Steve Mueller, Dec 15th, 2004 @ 3:33pm

   
   

   I also grew up in Michigan and lived there until I moved to California in 1983. I don't remember ever seeing a WalMart in Michigan. To me, the chain seemed to come out of nowhere.

   Maybe one reason we didn't have many WalMarts in Michigan is because K-Mart was headquarted there. Or maybe WalMart just got huge after 1983.

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3.  

   Re: Michigan WalMart

   

   Mike (profile), Dec 15th, 2004 @ 4:05pm

   
   

   WalMart appears to be big in certain places. Where I grew up in NY there were no WalMarts. Where I went to college there were no WalMarts. Where I live now in California, there are no WalMarts. So, honestly, I think I've only been in a WalMart 3 or 4 times in my life. However, there are huge parts of the country where WalMart is about the only place people shop. I was recently in Florida, and discovered that there was a WalMart every half-mile or so in one area where I stayed. I asked someone where a WalMart/Target/KMart was in order to buy something, and got a list of about 6 different WalMarts I could choose from, in every single direction.

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4.  

   Re: Michigan WalMart

   

   dorpus, Dec 15th, 2004 @ 5:19pm

   
   

   Walmart is bigger in the South, that is my understanding. Sam Walton commands a mythological status in the South as an honest hillbilly who worked his way up from a small country store with a pickup truck. (In reality, he is an ex-navy officer with an MBA.) Walmart's culture of treating workers and suppliers harshly can be considered an artifact of the South's anti-union culture. It has some parallels to Silicon Valley's mythologies of guys who started computer companies in their garages, and its anti-union attitudes. In reality, silicon valley's successes were possible only because of massive investment in basic R&D by governments and large corporations.
   
   
   

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