Is Walmart Good for America

Is Wal-Mart Good for America? Currently Wal-Mart has 4,227 stores in the U.S and 3,210 internationally. Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world. In 2004 Wal-Mart accounted for 6.5 percent of the retail sales. In 2004 Wal-Mart had 1.3 million employees (Emek Basker). Sam Walton, a former JC Penney employee, started a small store named Walton’s in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1945. It grew into a multi-million dollar retail company known as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has done great things for consumers by keeping their prices low and affordable. They helped China create a middle class in their economy because most of the goods sold at Wal-Mart are manufactured in China. Although those things are good, they come at a price. They have created a more competitive market for retailers and manufacturers which caused a lot smaller retailers to close and go out of business. Wal-Mart also manipulates their suppliers by forcing them into unfair contracts and Wal-Mart provides very little chance for growth and promotion for their employees. In order for Wal-Mart to keep their prices low, they have to find the cheapest goods. Those goods are usually purchased from overseas manufactures. This business model has created a drop in manufacturing jobs in the US. Many believe that Wal-Mart is responsible for the loss America’s production industry. Wal-Mart set the standard for most retail businesses. In order to keep income flowing, most retail stores have modeled their stores after Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart offers a wide variety of merchandise in all their stores. They call them supercenters. You can find everything including but not limited to groceries, medicine, tires, pet supplies, music, electronics, clothing, books, office supplies, beauty products, sporting equipment, and gardening tools. The philosophy behind Wal-Mart was for customers to be able to find everything in one store for a cheap price. Since Wal-Mart has become so popular, more and more stores