Wal-Mart has indicated that it wants to add 230 stores to its units in the United States (165 supercenters, 40 discount stores, and 25 Sam’s Clubs) this coming year. Of the 165 new supercenters, Wal-Mart says 107 of the new supercenters will be “relocations or expansions” of discount stores, and 58 will be new locations. If you assume a minimum of 25 acres per project, Wal-Mart will be wasting beatween 3,000 and 6,000 acres of American land for its already super-saturated presence in the U.S. — on top of the 75,000 acres of land it already occupies. When you throw in the 100 units Wal-Mart wants to add internationally, the company says it will be adding nearly 35 million additional superflous square feet of selling space. If you are one of the 100 million shoppers whom Wal-Mart claims visits their stores each week, maybe its time you made a visit to Wal-Mart.com instead, and by shifting your purchases to the internet, make it clear to the company that you would rather they not gobble up another 6,000 acres of land this year, and cybermarket instead. Even better, use your local merchants instead, lowering the demand for new Wal-Marts.
Wal-Mart, by the way, spent $523,000,000 on advertising this past year. That means to bring you those Mr. Smiley image ads costs the company $1.43 million a day, or $59,703 every hour of every day, 365 days per year. The Wal-Mart image advertising campaign rolls out at roughly $1,000 every minute, of every day, all year long. No wonder many Americans are ‘brain-marted” after years of such propaganda. The Wal-Mart advertising budget has jumped nearly 80% since 1998, rising from $292 million, to $523 million in 2000.
