The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--And Howit's Transforming the American Economy

by Charles Fishman

Book Overview

"Highly readable, incisive, precise, and even elegant." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Insightful." --BusinessWeek

Wal-Mart isn't just the world's biggest company, it is probably the world's most written-about. But no book until this one has managed to penetrate its wall of silence or go beyond the usual polemics to analyze its actual effects on its customers, workers, and suppliers. Drawing on unprecedented interviews...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143038788
• ISBN13: 9780143038788
• Release Date: December 2006
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A brilliant spotlight on American values

For those who are still existing under the misapprehension that Wal-Mart is a benign gentle giant, "The Wal-Mart Effect" is a startling expose. For those of you already blown away by Fishman's revelationary Fast Company article, "The Wal-Mart You Don't Know," the book is not so much an expose as a calm-gone-turbulent ride downstream. At first you're drifting along, enjoying the still waters of Wal-Mart's earnest inception and formative years, soaking up the founder's sunny aspirations and the company's refreshing consumer-oriented mission and then before you know it, an oppressive darkness has enveloped you, a raging storm has rolled in, and you find yourself spinning helplessly in a cyclone at the edge of a 50-foot drop, trying to keep your head above water and find a way to get off. At book's end, you are no longer asking "How did we get here?" but rather "How do we get out?" and "Where do we go from here?" In true journalistic form, Fishman takes painstaking efforts to present a balanced account, outlining the positives of Wal-Mart's effect--its cost savings for consumers, its distribution and packaging genius, its humble, no-frills headquarters and persona, and its even, unbiased expectations for all of its suppliers. But it is Fishman's disclosure of how Wal-Mart now achieves its low-price policy--the wave after wave of personal story after personal story of the struggling U.S. manufacturers and suppliers, their wage-starved or pink-slipped employees, bankrupted ethical competitors, tax-deprived towns, and overburdened social agencies wrecked in the Titan's tempestuous wake--that is the book's true mark of greatness. Like a Steinbeck novel, The Wal-Mart Effect is profound in its simplicity. Fishman demonstrates an uncanny ability to make clear that which should already be obvious, but isn't; you open your eyes and say "How did I not see this before?!" By focusing on Wal-Mart and the mentality it embodies, Fishman shines a brilliant spotlight on our American values--bargains over jobs; excess over ethics, the golden calf over the stony tablets. If knowledge is power, "The Wal-Mart Effect" is Herculean in its potential to turn back the tide of American blind allegiance to low price at any cost.

So Good, You'll Fight Over Who Gets to Read It Next

This is an excellent, even mesmerizing, read. Charles Fishman takes an unbiased look at Walmart and diligently searches for the facts. He gathers the statistics together with the stories of companies like Vlassic, Makin Bacon, Snapper lawn mowers, DMC thread, Ridlen glue and L.R. Nelson sprinklers. He shows the effect that Walmart has on the customer, the factories, the companies and the world. So engrossing, my wife and I actually quarreled at night over who got to read it. We had some great discussions afterward about what we could and should do as consumers. This book will make you think. There are several jaw-dropping facts in this book that I did not want to forget. So below are just a handful of these discoveries, some almost stranger than fiction. Read the book and you'll find much more and see how they are all linked together. Walmart has 1,906 Supercenters, 1,000 more than it did 5 years ago. A typical Walmart Supercenter offers 120,000 different items for sale. A New York Times story in February 1986 was headlined "Kmart Closing the Sears Gap." The story asked, "Will the Kmart Corporation edge out Sears, Roebuck and Company before the 1980s end and become the nation's largest general merchandise retailer?" The story did not mention Walmart. By the end of 1990, Walmart was bigger than Kmart. Two years later Walmart passed Sears. By the end of 1994, Walmart was bigger than the two combined. 53 percent of the U.S. population lives within five miles of a Walmart; 90 percent live within fifteen miles; 97 percent live within 20 miles. 15 years ago, there were no Walmarts in Mexico. They are now the largest corporate employer, the largest retailer and the largest grocer in the country. During the last seven years, a remarkable milestone has passed all but unnoticed: In 2003, for the first time in modern U.S. history, the number of Americans working in retail (14.9 million) was greater than the number of Americans working in factories (14.5 million). We have more people working in stores than we do making the merchandise to put in them. Huffy Bikes once gave four of their designs to competitors to help them meet an order they had with Walmart. Today, 95 percent of the bikes sold in the USA are imported from China. The senior vice president for public affairs for Black and Decker said, "The cost structure of operating manufacturing plants in the United States is just enormously out of sync with what people want to pay. Dramatically." 65 percent of the farmed salmon sold in the U.S. comes from Chile. 12 years ago, Chile had no salmon. A sixteen year-old sewing operator at a factory in Bangladesh describes her experiences of working for a supplier to Walmart. She earned 13 cents an hour, fourteen hours of work a day, $26.98 a month. If she didn't sew to the mandated pace, pockets onto 120 pants per hour, a supervisor would slap her across the face with the pants she was sewing. "This happens often. They hit you hard. It is no joke." At t

Always impacting America

Critically examining factors in American capitalism which Wal-Mart mastered to grow into the corporate powerhouse it is today, Charles Fishman's book won't be stocked in the book section of those mega stores. However, then conceding their ongoing popularity with the American public, it also won't be on the most read lists of those believing the discount retailer is Satan. Unlike the struggling K-mart, Wal-Mart had understood the importance of customer satisfaction and continues to maintain it with a cut-throat diligence. Stores are clean, bright, stocked with ample quantities of name brand products at cheap prices, and helpful employees. Furthermore, the Wal-Mart store mascot itself is a smiley face, designed to raise customer comfort and trust levels. Traditionally associated with the free-spirit 60's, the icon now represents anti-union- free-market-southern-capitalism at the most direct: `Always low prices'. It does not necessarily translate into a `smiley face' environment for employees of the stores however. Fishman notes that only former Wal-Mart employees were able to be interviewed for his book. Corporate policy officially prohibits current employees (including management) from taking with anybody who would write anything that could possibly be construed as critical. Furthermore, he questions the costs behind the `low prices' even if the products themselves are being purchased by individuals with little money. Like myself (who practically lived through Wal-Mart as a financially-struggling college student) and many others, Fishman honestly wrestles with his complex feelings about Wal-Mart specifically and American retailing in general. People uneasy about Wal-Mart labor practices and community-environmental impacts still shop there because of our own economic situation and/or time considerations. The company's bottom line might be making profits for itself, but its products ultimately do enable us to succeed with our own tasks and get on with our own lives. The genius of this book is that it poses the thesis and supporting questions without consequently degenerating into either a doctrinaire defense or attack of this retailer. Fishman points out that Wal-Mart's economic doctrine has the retailer consistently shopping for whatever manufacturer can meet the company supply specs and today's supplier may very well be discarded tomorrow in this very atmosphere. Depending on perspective, it is either heartless exploitation or simply the game of capitalism being played by somebody really knowing game rules. This translates into consumers expecting that other stores will offer their products at simmilar prices, and abandonding them when this does not occur for whatever reason (higher manufacturer and/or supplier wages). Fishman wants us to make up our own perspective on the company and how it came to be. I have an aversion to most books examining corporations because they lack academic neutrality, but this work is a notable exce

Like or hate the place, Walmart affects us all.....but do you know how much?

After seeing a rather frightening documentary about the worst of Walmart's business practices, I decided to have a look at his book. I'm glad I did because I learned quite a few things that weren't exactly public information...in fact, they might actually be company secrets. Mostly, though, I got a glimpse into the ways Wal-Mart affects our economy, for good and ill, with their relentless search for low prices (which consumers seem to love, not realizing how this could weaken our economy), to the bully tactics used to force suppliers to offer the "lowest price", even in the wake of higher costs for raw materials and other factors that make price cuts near impossible, below a certain level. The result? Wal-mart often buys from manufacturers who produce products overseas (they can often produce products for prices cheaper than American companies), lessening the benefit to the American companies and actually forcing many longtime name brands out of business. Gone are many of the familiar names we used to see on store shelves and others are hard-pressed to stay in business (Rubbermaid learned a hard lesson when it tried to buck the Walmart dictates and Walmart retaliated) or are forced to lessen the quality of what they offer. Anyone who lives near Walmart (and who doesn't?) should read this book to get a real idea of how the company influences nearly every product you buy. Why? Because the Walmart "formula" is one more and more companes are being forced to imitate. Yes, this may result in lower prices for many products but is the overall longterm effect good for us- and our economy? That is a major issue addressed in the book. By the way, an excerpt from this book appeared in a national magazine and led to what that magazine called the most powerful response from its readers IN THE HISTORY OF THE MAGAZINE. So be prepared for the author to keep you glued to the pages.

Wal-Mart Culture

Wal-Mart, one of the world's largest economies (it accounts for an astounding 2% of the U.S. gross domestic product, and in any given week, 100 million people--half the adult population in the U.S.--shop at Wal-Mart!), has taken it on the chin in recent years. John Dicker's _United States of Wal-Mart_, Bill Quinn's _How Wal-Mart Is Destroying America and the World_, and the recent film "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," are all examples of this trend. Each of them documents Wal-Mart's low wages and benefits, its take-no-prisoners competitiveness that slashes-and-burns local business and guts local main streets, and its willingess to buy sweat-shop goods. In his _Wal-Mart Effect_, Fishman doesn't deny the pernicious practices of Wal-Mart. But the more interesting feature of his book is his analysis of the culture that Wal-Mart has created in the United States. In a word, Wal-Mart has trained the American consumer to expect and to demand low prices, and to immediately suspect that any commodity that has a higher price tag than its Wal-Mart equivalent must be a rip-off. The Wal-Mart ethos, in other words, has replaced traditional consumer concern for high quality with low cost as the primary criterion. This replacement of quality with cheapness is troubling enough (think of the environmental effect of buying cheap crap that quickly winds up in a landfill). But Fishman goes on to show that the new culture of low costs means that Wal-Mart must relentlessly scurry to satisfy the customer demands that its practices have created. So Wal-Mart increasingly buys off-shore sweat shop products to keep down prices, and in the process is forcing more and more American wholesellers, already struggling to survive, to shut down their U.S. operations and move overseas where labor and production costs are lower. Fishman is careful to point out that Wal-Mart really does offer commodities--especially groceries, which Wal-Mart offers about 15% cheaper than its competitors--at lower prices, and this is no small benefit for folks who live on the economic margins (a steadily growing demographic group). But the hidden cost of the low prices is a disturbing cultural and economic transformation: a disregard for quality and the outsourcing of America. Highly recommended.