Wal-Mart is supposed to be good with numbers, but they can’t count very high when it comes to tracking losing superstore battles at the local level. According to a September 11,2000 cover story in Business Week magazine, Wal-Mart low-balls the number of citizen group fights it loses. In the story, entitled “Too Much Corporate Power?” I made the statement that “some 40 or 50 such clashes are going on at any one time today, ore than triple the number of a few years ago…The citizen’s movement is costing the industry millions of dollars in lost sales, and at least $200,000 to $300,000 to campaign against us in each battle.” The response from Wal-Mart? The article continues: “Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr. says that ‘without a doubt’ his company faces more challenges to new stores these days, even though it wins many battles. A company spokesman estimates that activists block at least two or three new stores a year. Even a hand-held calculator would have produced a much higher number than that. Just another example of “Wal-Math” I suppose. The number of withdrawn or rejected Wal-Mart’s could easily be eight or ten times that number every year. The same Business Week story, by the way, reported that in a survey by the magazine 74% of Americans polled said that business groups have too much political influence, and 82% agree that entertainment and popular culture are dominated by corporate money.
In the same Business Week story, Wal-Mart’s retired CEO David Glass is quoted as saying “Retailers need to be more responsible to look and see if problems are being created” by big box stores. Any visitors to this website who have seen one example of companies like Wal-Mart being “more responsible” are urged to contact sprawl-busters immediately at [email protected].
