The Economic Impacts of Walmart Supercenters

Abstract

Our purpose is to review the economic impacts of Walmart's disruption of the food retailing industry. This review synthesizes the extant knowledge and research findings related to the economic impacts of Walmart's entry into, and subsequent domination of, food retailing in the United States and more broadly globally. The findings suggest five broad generalizations: ( a) Walmart's physical growth in the United States has slowed considerably, but the company is growing rapidly in terms of total assets, digital capabilities, international presence, and sales per square foot; ( b) Walmart's entry and presence are associated with lower food prices for households; ( c) Walmart has considerable negative impacts on large competitors, particularly supermarkets, but the evidence for Walmart's deleterious impacts on small businesses is limited; ( d) there is no consensus on the impact of Walmart on local employment, but most studies on the topic point to a modest increase in retail employment; and ( e) Walmart likely increases food access but does not improve dietary quality. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Resource Economics, Volume 14 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The 2023 Merger Guidelines: Law, Fact, and Method

“…One well known story is Walmart, which enters new markets mainly de novo, and in the process harms competing grocers both large and small. 111 This is particularly likely to be true in more concentrated markets where scale economies are significant.…”

Research on the Walmarts Successful Application of Supply Chain Management

“…In the process of doing supply chain management, enterprises often encounter some problems, such as unclear core values, poor utilization of external resources, poor digital construction, resulting in the inability to give strong information technology support, the lack of an effective information exchange platform, thus reducing communication efficiency and work efficiency, etc. Some enterprises may be limited to internal management, but ignore the cooperation and development of upstream and downstream enterprises, the lack of effective connection and communication between enterprises and suppliers, suppliers and retailers, and the allocation of enterprise resources may lack rationality, not fully utilizing external resources, and the failure to establish partnerships among various enterprises, etc [7][8][9].…”