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Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

File:WalMartStores.png
Company type	Discount store/Public (NYSE: WMT)
Industry	Retail
Founded	Rogers, Arkansas, 1962
Headquarters	Bentonville, Arkansas, USA
Key people	Sam Walton (1918–1992), Founder H. Lee Scott, CEO S. Robson Walton, Chairman
Products	Wal-Mart Discount Stores Wal-Mart Supercenter Sam's Club Neighborhood Markets ASDA
Revenue	$316 billion USD ($11B FY 2006)
Operating income	20,428,000,000 United States dollar (2022)
Net income	11,680,000,000 United States dollar (2022)
Total assets	252,496,000,000 United States dollar (2021)
Number of employees	1.7 million
Website	http://www.walmartstores.com/

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) was founded by Sam Walton in 1962. It is the largest retailer in the world and was the largest corporation in the world based on revenue as ranked by the Fortune Global 500 in 2005.

Wal-Mart's impact is hotly debated. Specific areas of controversy include the company's product origins, treatment of employees and suppliers, environmental policies, extraction of public subsidies (corporate welfare), availability of prescription contraceptives at Wal-Mart pharmacy counters, and store impacts on local communities and businesses. The controversy is covered in more detail in the Criticism of Wal-Mart article.

Business

Wal-Mart operates retail department stores selling a range of non-grocery products, though emphasis is now focused on the "supercenters" which include more grocery items. Wal-Mart also operates Sam's Club, a "warehouse club" (similar to Costco and BJ's) that sells discounted bulk merchandise to dues-paying members.

In addition to its wholly-owned international operations, Wal-Mart owns a 42% stake in The Seiyu Co., Ltd. in Japan, with a proposed $597 million to increase its stake to 50%. This purchase has been approved by Seiyu Group shareholders and The Seiyu will be consolidated into Wal-Mart International in FYE 2006.

In September 2005, Wal-Mart acquired 33.3% of the Central American Retail Holding Company (CARHCO), and in March 2006, increased its holdings to 51%. Wal-Mart Central America was formed from the 375 supermarkets and other store formats, operating in 5 Central American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

In the past, Wal-Mart operated dot Discount Drugs, Bud's Discount City, Hypermart*USA, OneSource Nutrition Centers, and Save-Co Home Improvement stores. In 1990 Wal-Mart acquired The McLane Company, a foodservice distributor. In 2003 McLane Company was sold to Berkshire Hathaway.

Wal-Mart stock is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol WMT.

Competition in the United States

Wal-Mart's chief competitors in low-end general merchandise nationally include Sears Holdings Corporation's Kmart chain and Target. Many smaller regional chains, such as Meijer in the midwest, are also competitors. Wal-Mart's move into the grocery business has also positioned it against major grocery chains such as HEB, Kroger, Albertsons, Publix, Giant Eagle, Safeway and many other regional chains and independents. Chief competitors of Wal-Mart's Sam's Club division are Costco, with a slightly higher gross than Sam's Club outlets, as well as the smaller BJ's Wholesale Club chain operating mainly in the eastern U.S..

Some people believe that Wal-Mart has driven smaller businesses out of the market. Due to Wal-Mart's focus on more expensive items (and larger population areas), a niche has been carved out of Wal-Mart's dominance by several retail corporations . By focusing on a small number of low-cost products, retailers such as Family Dollar and Dollar General have successfully competed head-to-head with Wal-Mart for home consumer sales. In response to this, Wal-Mart started testing their own dollar store concept in 2004, a subsection of some stores known as, "Pennies-n-Cents."

Wal-Mart Television Network

The Wal-Mart Television Network is an in-store network showing commercials for products sold in the stores, concert clips and music videos for a recording artist's media sold in the stores, trailers for upcoming movie releases, and news. According to a New York Times story, it is seen by 130 million people a month, making it the fifth largest network in America..

Experiments

Wal-Mart has experimented publicly with changes to certain of its business practices.

Renewable energy

Recently, Wal-Mart has designed two experimental stores , one in McKinney, Texas and the other in Aurora, Colorado, which feature wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels, and biofuel-capable boilers. The buildings also include many other energy and cost-saving technologies. Critics, such as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance "Institute for Local Self-Reliance"., contend that Wal-Mart's negative environmental impact extremely outweighs gestures at two stores among several thousand. Driving sprawl, consuming unnecessarily large amounts of land and locating on environmentally sensitive sites are among the complaints. This is also viewed just another corporate PR exercise by many as Walmart have made no pro-active progress on changing their business practices to reduce their impact on the environment.

Attracting upscale consumers

In March 2006 Wal-Mart opened a new Supercenter in Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, that is decidedly fancier than other Wal-Mart stores. It is part of their effort to attract a more affluent demographic, who tend to view Wal-Mart product offerings as inferior to those of such stores as Costco and Target. Differences from conventional Wal-Mart Supercenters include wooden floors, wider aisles, a sushi bar, a coffee/sandwich shop (with free Wi-Fi Internet access) instead of the usual fast food venue, and pricier items, including expensive wines and high-end electronics. This Wal-Mart is also the first and only store to implement employee baggers at the checkout lines. The exterior sports the less-common hunter green background behind the Wal-Mart letters instead of the trademark blue. Wal-Mart states that this type of store is not planned to be duplicated anywhere else.

Advertising in local newspapers

After complaints by newspaper publishers in early 2005 that Wal-Mart did not advertise in smaller newspapers, the company placed ads in 336 Missouri and Oklahoma newspapers preceding the 2005 holiday shopping season. In April 2006 Wal-Mart claimed, "our test showed that it did increase product sales, but our margins are so thin that we didn't even come close to offsetting the cost of the ads."

Employees

Wal-Mart refers to its employees as "associates," and encourages managers to think of themselves as "servant leaders." Each shift at every store, club, and distribution center is supposed to start with a store-wide meeting where managers discuss with hourly employees daily sales figures, company news, and goals for the day. This may or may not be true in practice.

All Wal-Mart stores in the United States have employees referred to as "People Greeters." They welcome people to the store and help prevent shoplifting. At some stores, these employees inspect the contents of the shopping carts of exiting customers.

Wal-Mart only hires non-union labor.

Wal-Mart benefits

According to an October 2005 article in BusinessWeek, Wal-Mart's health insurance covers 44% or approximately 572,000 of its 1.3 million U.S. workers. In comparison, Wal-Mart rival Costco insures approximately 96% of its eligible workers. Further, Wal-Mart spends $3,500 on average per employee for health care while the average money spent for health care per employee for the entire retail industry is $4,800, 27% more. Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott acknowledged benefits could improve by claiming Wal-Mart employees can get better value from taxpayer funded health care than from Wal-Mart's own health plans: "In some of our states, the public program may actually be a better value - with relatively high income limits to qualify, and low premiums." On April 17th, 2006, Wal-Mart announced it was making a health care plan available to part-time workers after 1 year of service, compared to 2 years before. One criticism of the new plan is that it provides benefit only after a $1,000 deductible is paid ($3,000 for a family). These deductibles may financially be out of reach for eligible part-time workers. Wal-Mart estimates this change can add 150,000 workers to health coverage plans, if all who are eligible take part.

The State of Maryland passed a controversial bill in January of 2006 requiring that all corporations with more than 10,000 employees in the state spend at least 8% of their payroll on employee benefits, or pay into a state fund for the uninsured. Wal-Mart, with about 17,000 employees in Maryland, was the only known company to not meet this requirement before the bill passed.

Unionization

Main article: Wal-Mart employee and labor relations

Wal-Mart has largely thwarted unionization by its U.S. employees with aggressively anti-union tactics. For example, when meat cutters at the Jacksonville, Texas supercenter voted to unionize in 2000, Wal-Mart closed its meat department and began shipping in pre-packaged meats at all stores. Similarly, when workers at a Jonquières, Quebec Wal-Mart voted to unionize, Wal-Mart closed the store five months later, claiming it was due to weak profits. Critics allege Wal-Mart conspired to close the store as part of an anti-union scheme.

Another store in St-Hyacinthe has unionized.

Financial results

Wal-Mart is now the largest grocery chain in the U.S., with 14 percent of all grocery sales — nearly twice the sales of Kroger ($95 billion vs. $51 billion). Wal-Mart also does 20 percent of the retail toy business.

Wal-Mart went public on October 1, 1970. Since then its stock has climbed from 5 cents (split adjusted) to a high of $63 in March 2002. Its stock has dropped more than 20% since then, reaching a low price of $42.31 on September 22, 2005.

For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2006, Wal-Mart reported net income of US$11.2 billion on US$316 billion of sales revenue (3.5% profit margin). It is the largest private employer in the United States, Mexico and Canada. It holds an 8.9 percent retail store market share, with $8.90 out of every $100 spent in U.S. retail stores being spent at Wal-Mart.

Different explanations have been offered for this success:

• The company has always paid a great deal of attention to site selection; in the company's early years, Sam Walton would fly over small towns in a private plane to identify prospective locations. The company claims it analyzes potential locations to find those that would support "one and a half" stores. Although the intended location was a seemingly small rural town, being up in a plane would reveal a lucrative market if the surrounding communities were taken into account, defying the conventional wisdom that a discount store requires a sizable city. Wal-Mart then promptly moved quickly to pre-empt these discovered locations, since allowing a competitor to locate would likely cause a price war that would make both discount stores unprofitable. Lastly, rural towns were less likely to have organized unions and community activists unlike large urban centers. "This strategy gave Wal-Mart a near monopoly in its local markets and enabled the company to ride out the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s more successfully than its then larger competitors such as K-Mart."
• Wal-Mart benefits from economies of scale in manufacturing and logistics; the purchase of massive quantities of items from its suppliers combined with a very efficient stock control system help make Wal-Mart's operating costs lower than those of its competitors. They are leaders in the field of vendor managed inventory—asking large suppliers to oversee stock control for a category and make recommendations to Wal-Mart buyers. This reduces the overhead of having a large inventory control and buying department. Wal-Mart's vast purchasing power also gives it the leverage to force manufacturers to change their production (usually by creating cheaper products) to suit its wishes: a single Wal-Mart order can easily comprise a double-digit percentage of a supplier's annual output.
• One particular aspect of the economy of scale is the aggregation effect, used in other business such as The Home Depot and Wells Fargo, whereby Wal-Mart sells as many different items as possible. This allows the company to grow revenue over its fixed cost base (more sales out of the same store). This is why Wal-Mart began to sell low margin groceries.
• Information Systems: Wal-Mart helped push the retail industry to adopt UPC codes and bar-code scanning equipment. Also, Wal-Mart's focus on cost reduction has led to its involvement in a standards effort to use RFID-based Electronic Product Codes to lower the costs of supply chain management. As of June 2004, it has announced plans to require the use of the technology among its top 300 suppliers by January 2006.
• Suppliers: A spokesperson for the company told the Wall Street Journal on November 18, 2004 that it imported $15 billion worth of goods from China in the year that ended January 31, 2004. About $7.5 billion were directly imported by Wal-Mart; the other $7.5 came indirectly through suppliers. In the same period net sales reached $256 billion, with $209 billion coming from U.S. operations. U.S. current account imports from China was reported as $152.4 billion during 2003 U.S. Mainland Chinese media place Wal-Mart as their 8th largest trading partner in front of Russia and the UK on the top-10 list.
• Cost Control: Wal-Mart watches controllable expenses very closely. Hourly employees can be reprimanded or terminated for having unauthorized overtime. In the past, Wal-Mart has taken this practice to the level of demanding unpaid overtime from its employees. Wal-Mart also squeezes out any inefficiencies in the business, such as reducing paper consumption by using a computerized process.
• Time sheet Manipulation: Some employees of Wal-Mart stores have accused the chain of manipulation time sheets of its workers by moving hours worked as overtime to alternate weeks to aviod paying the higher wages required for overtime workers. There are also reports of managers deleting overtime hours altogether.

Criticism

Main article: Criticism of Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is a target of much criticism. Critics, including community groups, grass roots organisations, trade unions, and environmental groups believe Wal-Mart's success derives from business practices harmful to employees, local communities, the economy and the environment. The article on Wal-Mart employee and labor relations presents some of these issues. In 2005, Wal-Mart officials embarked on a public relations campaign to counter some of the criticism it receives, through its public relations website as well as through television commercials which show employees who have had a medical emergency and have been sent by Wal-Mart to the Mayo Clinic.

It was reported in the New York Times on November 1, 2005 that in response to increased criticism the public relations firm Edelman had been retained. Edelman has set up an internal "war room", a rapid-response public relations team, staffed with high-profile political operatives to respond to negative media attention. Operatives hired include Michael K. Deaver who formerly worked on behalf of Ronald Reagan, Leslie Dach who worked on behalf of Bill Clinton, and Robert McAdam who worked on behalf of the Tobacco Institute.

Wal-Mart's public relations effort has also included emailing favorable material to bloggers, some of whom have disseminated it without disclosing that it was written by the company.

"Under assault as never before, Wal-Mart is increasingly looking beyond the mainstream media and working directly with bloggers, feeding them exclusive nuggets of news, suggesting topics for postings and even inviting them to visit its corporate headquarters."

April 2006 entries appearing on the websites Whitedust and Slashdot insinuated that Wal-Mart's public relations wing has been involved in an edit war of the company's Misplaced Pages article for the past two years. Tactics cited include removing unfavorable information, shunting unfavorable information off to separate articles, and including copious passages of positive information.

Economic impact studies in the United States

As Wal-Mart is an enormously large business, it has a significant impact on economies wherever it operates. At least two dozen studies have been conducted to determined the nature and extent of this effect, most of which are indexed here or here (both sites emphasize negatives of big boxes).

Kenneth E. Stone of Iowa State University has published several studies on Wal-Mart. In 1997, Stone found that small towns "lose up to 47 percent of their retail trade after 10 years of Wal-Mart stores nearby." A study by Russell S. Sobel and Andrea M. Dean, says that the Stone study is flawed, and found that though Wal-Mart openings cause some small businesses to close by offering lower prices, it also creates opportunities for other small businesses and that as a result, "the process of creative destruction unleashed by Wal-Mart has no statistically significant impact on the overall size of the small business sector in the United States." In 2003, Stone collaborated with Georgeanne Artz, also of Iowa State University, and Albert Myles of Mississippi State University to show that there "are both positive and negative impacts on existing stores in the area where the new supercenter locates."

In 2002, the state of Georgia's survey of children in the state's subsidized health care system, PeachCare, found that Wal-Mart employed more of the parents of these children than any other employer. More than 10,000 children who qualified for the program had parents working at Wal-Mart. The next largest employer employed the parents of less than 800 children in the program.

A 2002 study by Emek Basker of the University of Missouri examined the impact of Wal-Mart on local employment. Basker found that Wal-Mart's entry into a county increased net retail employment in that county by 100 jobs in the short term. Half of this increase disappeared as other retail establishments close or reduce employment over a five-year period "leaving a long-run statistically significant net gain of 50 jobs."

In 2004, the University of California, Berkeley published a study which asserted that Wal-Mart's low wages and benefits resulted in an increased burden on the social safety net, costing California taxpayers $86 million.

A 2005 study by Jerry Hausman of MIT and Ephraim Leibtag of the USDA found that because the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not take into account lower prices at discount retailers, like Wal-Mart, that food at home inflation was overstated by as much as 15% per year. Another 2005 study the same authors measures the effect on consumer welfare of the presence of discount retailers.

A 2005 study by Global Insight commissioned by Wal-Mart found the company has had a positive net economic impact on the U.S. economy . From 1985-2004, Wal-Mart "can be associated with a cumulative decline of 9.1% in food-at-home prices, a 4.2% decline in commodities (goods) prices, and a 3.1% decline in overall consumer prices," and that this has saved consumers $263 billion in that time frame ($2329 per household). Also in that time period, it is responsible for the creation of 210,000 net jobs for the economy. The study indicates that "nominal wages are 2.2% lower, but given that consumer prices are 3.1% lower, real disposable income is 0.9% higher than it would have been in a world without Wal-Mart." Other papers presented at the conference contradict some of Global Insight's claims.

Wal-Mart in popular culture

• Billie Letts' 1995 novel Where the Heart Is depicts 17-year-old Novalee Nation moving in to, and giving birth in, an Oklahoma Wal-Mart.
• The chain banned Sheryl Crow's 1996 self-titled album because the lyrics in the song Love is a Good Thing went, in part: "Watch out sister/Watch out brother/Watch our children as they kill each other/with a gun they bought at the Wal-Mart discount stores."
• "Sprawl-Mart" and Monstromart are big-box retailers in Springfield on Fox's The Simpsons.
• "Mega Lo Mart" (with a pronunciation similar to "megalomania") is a large discount retailer on Fox's King of the Hill.
• "Price-Mart" is the Wal-Mart stand-in for jokes on "That 70's Show"
• Country music star Chris Cagle's 2005 album "Anywhere But Here" is released, which includes the hit song, "Wal-Mart Parking Lot", which tells the tale of coming-of-age in a small U.S. town.
• A "Wall-Mart" built in Comedy Central's South Park episode "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes" runs all local stores out of business. The retailer is depicted as a self-aware and independent entity, building itself across the nation to take over everything, and forcing employees and managers to work there against their will. The episode also pokes fun at consumers: South Park residents are forced to shop at Wall-Mart because they are unable to resist its everyday low prices. The town, unable to resist shopping there, tries to burn Wall-Mart, but a crew rebuilds it the following day. Stan and Kyle eventually destroy the Wall-Mart by breaking its heart, a mirror in the electronics department that reflects the image of Stan and Kyle, which shows them that the heart of Wall-Mart is the consumers. South Park residents return to a mom and pop store until it too becomes a big box retailer, which residents promptly burn to the ground.
• The Fairly Oddparents parody Wal-mart with a massive store called the Wall-2-Wall Mart
• A JibJab cartoon called "Big Box Mart" premiered on the October 13, 2005 Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
• Former Miami Herald humor columnist Dave Barry penned a column detailing the early millennium fascination with spending the night in an RV parked outside Wal-Mart.
• Robert Greenwald, documentary filmmaker of "OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" released "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price", a film highly critical of Wal-Mart in 2005.

Statistics

Retail operations

Wal-Mart operates 5 major retail formats under 3 retail divisions:

• Wal-Mart Stores, USA
  • Wal-Mart Discount Stores — Average 100,000 square feet (9,290 m²) and include a selection of general merchandise, including apparel, electronics, health and beauty aids, toys, sporting goods, and household products. The stores also have an in-house-branded food court. There were 1,209 Wal-Mart Discount Stores in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006.
  • Wal-Mart Supercenter — Average 187,000 square feet (17,400 m²) and combine a standard Wal-Mart Discount Store with a full-line supermarket. (commonly known as big box stores or hypermarkets) The stores also typically feature a tire and oil change shop (Wal-Mart Tire & Lube Express), Wal-Mart Vision Center, and numerous alcove shops - such as a Wal-Mart Money Center, hair and nail salons, a Movie Gallery video store, an arcade, and a branch from a local bank in the area. The food courts are normally limited-menu McDonald's, though Subway, Dunkin Donuts, and Baskin-Robbins have also been located. Some locations also sell gasoline through Murphy USA. There were 1,980 Wal-Mart Supercenters in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006.
  • Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market — Average 43,000 square feet (4,000 m²) and include grocery, pharmacy, and limited general merchandise products. There were 101 Neighborhood Markets in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006. The concept will be introduced into Canada in 2006 with 3 stores (one in London, Ontario and 2 in the Greater Toronto Area).
  • Walmart.com — Online shopping site that offers merchandise different from that in stores. The walmart.com site also offers digital music downloads with digital rights management (DRM) and online photo processing.
• Sam's Club — a membership-only wholesale warehouse club focused mainly on serving small business owners. Clubs average 128,000 square feet (11,891 m²). Like some Wal-Mart Supercenters, some Sam's Club locations sell gasoline through Murphy USA. There were 567 Sam's Clubs in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006. Sam's Club also operates in Canada.
• Wal-Mart International — operates various formats internationally, including (but not limited to) SAM'S CLUB, Discount Stores, Supercenters, Supermarkets, and restaurants.

In the United Kingdom the Wal*Mart name is only used as part of the main retail name (in conjunction with the ASDA brand) for the ultra large hypermarket format. In addition to the standard ASDA stores, the company also runs the high street George clothes store brand.

Store counts and revenue

Store Counts (as of May 4, 2006) & Revenue (for FYE January 31, 2006):

• Company Total: 6,556 stores (US$312.4 billion)
  • Wal-Mart Stores USA (3,877 stores, excluding Puerto Rico) (US$209.9 billion)
    • Discount Stores: 1,183
    • Supercenters: 2,022
    • SAM'S CLUB (United States): 568 Clubs (US$39.7 billion total)
    • Neighborhood Markets: 104
  • International: 2,679 (US$62.7 billion total)
    • Argentina: 12
    • Brazil: 293
    • Canada: 278
    • China: 57
    • Costa Rica: 128
    • El Salvador: 58
    • Germany: 88
    • Guatemala: 120
    • Honduras: 37
    • Japan: 397
    • Mexico: 789
    • Nicaragua: 33
    • Puerto Rico (United States insular area): 54
    • South Korea: 16
    • United Kingdom (ASDA): 319

ASDA in the United Kingdom is the largest of the international businesses by sales. In Germany, however, after eight years in the market, Wal-Mart's yearly revenue is still less than one-tenth of the leading retailer, EDEKA. The presence of unions, the difficulty of obtaining building permits and high competition are some possible reasons for this lack of success. With Aldi and Lidl there are also two established discounters in the market that drive the same price policy as Wal-Mart.

Corporate governance

• Current List and Biographies of Board of Directors
• Directory of All Senior Officers

Former members of the board of directors of Wal-Mart include Hillary Clinton (1985-1992), who also worked for Wal-Mart as a lawyer, and Tom Coughlin, who went on to be vice chairman . He has since plead guilty to five counts of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return related to embezzlement and theft from Wal-Mart while serving as a member of its board.

See also

• ASDA
• Code Adam, the Wal-Mart child-safety program
• Criticism of Wal-Mart
• List of assets owned by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
• List of Wal-Mart brands
• Retailing
• Supermarket
• Superstore
• Wal-Mart Employee and Labor Relations
• Walmarting
• Wal Mart Canada
• Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price - a 2005 documentary by Robert Greenwald.
• Whirl-Mart
• Working Families for Wal-Mart

References

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35. Harkavy, Ward (2000-05-24). "Wal-Mart's First Lady". Village Voice. Retrieved 2006-05-05. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Further reading

• Bergdahl, Michael (2004). What I Learned from Sam Walton: How to Compete and Thrive in a Wal-Mart World. ISBN 0471679984.
• Bianco, Anthony (2006). The Bully of Bentonville: How the High Cost of Wal-Mart's Everyday Low Prices Is Hurting America. ISBN 0385513569.
• Dicker, John (2005). The United States of Wal-Mart. Jeremy P. Tarcher. ISBN 1585424226.
• Ehrenreich, Barbara (2002). Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Owl Books. ISBN 0745318460.
• Featherstone, Liza (2004). Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart. Basic Books. ISBN 0465023169.
• Fishman, Charles (2005). The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and How It's Transforming the American Economy . Penguin Press. ISBN 1594200769. {{cite book}}: External link in |title= (help)
• Joseph, Marc & Fischer, Rusty (2005). The Secrets of Retailing, or: How to Beat Wal-Mart!. Silverback Books. ISBN 1596370378.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Lichtenstein, Nelson (2006). Wal-Mart: A Field Guide to America's Largest Company and the World's Largest Employer. New Press. ISBN 1595580352.
• Ortega, Bob (1998). In Sam We Trust: The Untold Story of Sam Walton and Wal-Mart, the World's Most Powerful Retailer. ISBN 0812963776.
• Peacock, Joe (2005). Mentally Incontinent: A Joe The Peacock Book, The Wal-Mart Story. ISBN 0977418405.
• Porter, David (2003). Megamall on the Hudson: Planning, Wal-Mart, and Grassroots Resistance. Trafford. ISBN 155369855X.
• Quinn, Bill (2005). How Wal-Mart Is Destroying America and the World: And What You Can Do about It (3rd edition). Ten Speed Press. ISBN 1580086683.
• Slater, Robert (2003). The Wal-Mart Decade: How a New Generation of Leaders Turned Sam Walton's Legacy into the World's #1 Company. ISBN 1591840066.
• Slater, Robert (2004). The Wal-Mart Triumph: Inside the World's #1 Company. ISBN 1591840430.
• Soderquist, Don (2005). The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company. ISBN 0785261192.
• Spotts, Greg (2005). Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. Disinformation Company. ISBN 1932857249.
• Westerman, Paul (2000). Data Warehousing: Using the Wal-Mart Model. ISBN 155860684X.

External links

• Official Websites: Primary/E-Commerce | Corporate | Public Relations | Foundation

Further information sources

• Reclaim Democracy a collection of articles, studies and websites on Wal-Mart. The articles (and the site) largely are critical of Wal-Mart.
• Against the Wal has a larger, but much less selective collection of articles on Wal-Mart.
• Wal-Mart's Corporate political contributions at BuyBlue.org
• Business Week, October 26, 2005, "Some Uncomfortable Findings for Wal-Mart" overview of some academic research on Wal-Mart

Articles supporting or explaining Wal-Mart

• Understanding the Wal-Mart Effect, Max Borders, Tech Central Station, April 11, 2005.
• Internal Documents of Wal-Mart Including "A Manager's Toolbox to Remaining Union-Free" and the company's "Report on Standards for Suppliers."
• Wal-Mart and RFID: Case Study Wal-Mart's future plans to further reduce costs.
• Wal-Mart's China inventory to hit US$18b this year China Daily, November 29, 2004.
• "A distorted lens on Wal-Mart", Bruce Bartlett, Washington Times, November 22, 2004.
• "Job Creation or Destruction? Labor-Market Effects of Wal-Mart Expansion" (pdf), Emek Basker, Dept. of Economics, University of Missouri, 2002.
• Measuring the Economic Impact of Wal-Mart on the U.S. Economy a study funded by Wal-Mart, determining the net economic impact of Wal-Mart at the national, city, and county level
• Should We Admire Wal-Mart? Fortune Magazine, March 8, 2004
• The Freedom to Hate Wal-Mart by Paul Jacob, The Free Liberal, December 5, 2005

Articles critical of Wal-Mart

• Company for the People Seattle Weekly, December 15 - 21, 2004, Article which contrasts Wal-Mart with employee-friendly Costco.
• Costco's Dilemma: Is Treating Employees Well Unacceptable for a Public Corporation? The Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2004 Costco's compensation for its employees with comparison to Wal-Mart
• How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart, The New York Times, July 17, 2005
• UC Berkeley report on the community impact of Wal-Mart's lower wages(pdf)
• "Inside the Leviathan" by Simon Head for The New York Review of Books, December 16, 2004
• "The Wal-Mart You Don't Know", Fast Company, Issue 77, December 2003, Page 68 Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas.
• California Legislators Call for Oversight of Wal-Mart's Health Benefits (Study of Peachcare)
• "Wal-Mart: High Prices for American Workers" file, (PDF February 16, 2004) from the Democratic Staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
• Up against the Wal-Mart, Business Week, March 13, 2000, Explains union's attempt to unionize Wal-Marts
• In Wal-Mart's America, Washington Post, August 27, 2003. Article argues that the decline of Union Industry jobs and the rise of Wal-Mart is destroying America's middle class.
• Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay For Wal-Mart(pdf), A Report by the Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce U.S. House of Representatives Representative George Miller, Senior Democrat, February 16, 2004
• Wal-Marts Cost State, Study Says, San Francisco Chronicle, August 3, 2004
• Retaliating first, Wal-Mart in Canada, The Economist, Feb 24th 2005
• Wal-Mart caught using child labor, CBC News, November 30, 2005.
• Video report of Wal-Mart using child labor, CBC News, November 30, 2005.
• Could the "Walmart Effect" impact Real Estate? PikeNet, January 31, 2006.

Websites critical of Wal-Mart

• Sprawl Busters, site Al Norman, an activist who helps local "site fights" against big box stores
• Index of numerous studies on Wal-Mart's economic and social impacts from The American Independent Business Alliance.
• Wake-Up Wal-Mart. A website by the United Food and Commercial Workers
• Wal-Mart Watch.
• Wal-Mart Wiki. Though not strictly critical, this wiki is (sometimes, depending upon the current edit) weighted against Wal-Mart.
• The New Rules Project. Critiques big box development. Not limited to Wal-Mart.
• Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. A feature-length documentary
• Walmart Dot Gov. A parody website.

• Directory of several dozen national and community anti-Wal-Mart groups
• Wal-mart's Misplaced Pages War
• Corporate Watch An extensive critique of Asda Walmart

Websites supporting Wal-Mart

• In Defense of Wal-Mart - from Mark Valenti's Liberty Page

Data

• Yahoo! - Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Company Profile
• WMT: Profile for WAL-MART STORES - Yahoo! Finance
• Walmart's most recent conference call transcripts
• 2004-04-09 10-K
• Wal-Mart political donations

Blogs

• Wal-Mart Space - a blog run by Bobby Gerry which explores Wal-Mart's financial statements

Documentaries

• Store Wars, a PBS special taking a close look at one community's battle over Wal-Mart.
• Frontline: Is Wal-Mart Good for America?, a PBS Frontline documentary on the impact of Wal-Mart in the U.S. and China.
• Why Wal-Mart Works & Why That Makes Some People Crazy, a pro-Wal-Mart documentary.

v t e Walmart
Walton family	1st generation Sam Walton Helen Walton James "Bud" Walton 2nd generation S. Robson Walton John T. Walton Christy Walton Jim Walton Alice Walton Ann Walton Kroenke Nancy Walton Laurie 3rd generation Lukas Walton Whitney Ann Kroenke Josh Kroenke Carrie Walton Penner Elizabeth Paige Laurie
Chairmen	Sam Walton S. Robson Walton Greg Penner
President/CEO	Sam Walton David Glass Lee Scott Mike Duke Doug McMillon
Former execs	Marc Lore
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Brands	Sam's Choice White Stag
Former assets	Asda Asda Mobile Bare Necessities Bonobos Hypermart USA Jet.com Marketside Más Club ModCloth Moosejaw Shoes.com Vudu Yihaodian
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