Or Wal-Mart comes to your town and drives away all the competition.

Or Germany was smart enough to slap a bunch of tariffs on Wal-Mart's goods and services to stop them from bankrupting all its local merchants.

Labor unions are still very strong in Germany, and Wal-Mart didn't know how to play the game. Lidl pisses on labor unions, but knows who to pay off. I think Wal-Mart's strategy mistake was to assume that consumers want EVERYTHING to be cheap. Lidl entices customers by selling a couple of key items (bread, beer, coffee etc.) dirty cheap (cheaper than Wal-Mart); this is enough to draw in customers who then end up doing all their shopping in Lidl. Different business model, one that works better in Europe. Apparently corporate strategists in Bentonville couldn't grok this difference. (link...) (link...)

A lot of us still like to have our shopping done within easy reach of home (preferably walking distance). Especially ALDI is ubiquitous unless you live in a rural village, but since in that case you have to drive to the nearest small town for your doctor's appointment or whatever anyway, lots of folks also drop by ALDI or LIDL. The stores are small enough that you encounter you neighbors there and have a little local "gossip" session. Usually you also find in the vicinity some larger food stores with higher priced delicatessen type items so that you really do not have to waste the gas to drive 30 to 50 kms to the closest Wal-Mart. And most of us are not to keen on shopping in a box on a field, since that kills our still lively downtowns.

I have seen the advertisement fliers of a Wal-Mart located the above mentioned distance away, but in all these years I have not once bothered to waste that much time and gasoline to have a look at the store, since the fliers were to my mind for various reasons unimpressive.

I personally also consider to a large degree how employees get treated by the various chains.

 

R. Neal said "Or Wal-Mart comes to your town and drives away all the competition."
 

It's not just the retailers that Wal-Mart drives out of business. 

A knowledgable person told me that Wal-Mart's demanding of lower wholesale prices from plastics manufacturer Rubbermaid caused them to have to file bankruptcy.

Just like all corrupt empires Wal-Mart will some day collapse from within.
 

Talk Tennessee Football at The County Seat

 

I forgot to mention earlier that as far as I have heard from Americans living relatively close to a German Wal-Mart branch that they had been very disappointed by the store, since they had expected it to be an exact copy of the stateside markets. They were completely surprised that Wal-Mart had to cater to German tastes and expectations in matters of food. Judging from the fliers the clothes Wal-Mart carried appeared to be fairly low in taste and as a result could not compete with ALDI's weekly specials.

The NYTimes had yesterday a pretty good write-up about what went wrong with Wal-Mart in Germany. Although I haven't been to any of these stores, the conclusions of the article coincide with what I have heard from folks who have had a look.

It's not just the retailers that Wal-Mart drives out of business.

A knowledgable person told me that Wal-Mart's demanding of lower wholesale prices from plastics manufacturer Rubbermaid caused them to have to file bankruptcy.

Here is a great article about that, that appeared in Harpers a few months back: (link...)