Mom and Pop Stores Take on Wal-Mart

By Michael H. Shuman, AlterNet. Posted September 6, 2006.

Editor's Note: This article is excerpted from The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses are Beating the Global Competition (Berrett-Koehler), by Michael H. Shuman.

Today is the one day each year I permit myself to be a petty thief. As my childhood shoplifter buddies used to explain, there's a thrill in being bad, plus there's cheap stuff to be had. Let me clarify - I don't plan on breaking any laws. My indulgence is perfectly legal, and many would even consider it smart shopping. But I shouldn't mince words. What I'm planning on doing ought to be called "community lifting." I'm going to make my annual summertime sneakers shopping run at Wal-Mart, even if it means snatching just a little bit of well-being from my neighbors.

Why am I doing this? Because for fifteen dollars I can get basic footwear that lasts a year. After twelve months of regular deployment, these puppies smell so bad they just might qualify as weapons of mass destruction. It's high time to bury the old pair and replace them with fresh rubber. And I don't want to spend a penny more than necessary.

Using the WalMart.com online directory, I discover that there are ten stores in the vicinity of my home in Washington, DC - not exactly your typical rural area targeted by the retailing giant. The closest one is in Alexandria, Virginia, sixteen miles away. Following directions from MapQuest, I wind my way through the region's sprawling suburbs, at one point ominously passing the reconstructed side of the Pentagon where terrorists crashed a plane in 2001. My mind flashes on the image of Mohammad Atta, leader of the 9/11 gang, caught on videotape on 9/10 buying his infamous box cutters at a Wal-Mart in Portland, Maine. Forty-five minutes later I arrive. The parking lot is jammed.

Even though the Fairfax store seems larger than a typical National Park and few staff are in the aisles to help, I quickly find my sneakers, the exact same kind I bought last year. A perfect fit! Off to the checkout line.

As I snake my way triumphantly through the aisles, I notice a few other items I could use. We just ran out of Crispix cereal and Chips Ahoy cookies. There's a great horse toy for my daughter Rachel, two years old, and some AA-batteries to fire it up. Hmmm, now I have to come back with something for Adam, my six-year-old, who's apprehensive about beginning kindergarten. Whew, there's a Back to School video, featuring Franklin the Turtle. He'll also like this new Jump Start computer program to help with his math and spelling, and a new folding chair to sit at the computer. And there's the Guinness Book of World Records book he and I were talking about the other night - got to get that. Bill Clinton's book, My Life, for only twenty-two dollars? What a steal!

And all this other stuff: a 120-foot extension cord to vacuum my car, a new plastic box for my loose files, a halogen reading lamp for bedside table, four new glasses for end-of-the-day drinks, a gigantic bottle of Tide, cheap bottles of Advil and Aleve for my chronic back pain that's going to get worse when I carry this load to the car. Enough!

I tag the checkout line as if it were home base and finally catch my breath. I consider asking the clerk to put me in a straitjacket so that I won't buy anything else.

It's the week before school opens, so long lines of exasperated parents and their screaming children make the nearly half-hour wait compare unfavorably to my experience squatting in a New Delhi bus station a decade earlier. My own checkout line is so long that by the time I reach the front the brain-dead clerk is relieved halfway through scanning my items. The new clerk begins by ringing me up again for the chair, a mistake to which I politely draw his attention. A bit grudgingly, he removes the extra charge. As I'm about to walk away, I look again at the receipt and discover that I have just parted with $275; I also realize that the new clerk double-charged me for the one item I came to buy in the first place - those damn sneakers

Show Me the Bargains

What kinds of deals did I secure during my whirlwind community-lifting experience? Research shows that the "savings" from shopping at chain stores generally turn out to be vastly overestimated. A 2002 survey by the Maine Department of Human Services, for example, found that local drugstores actually provided better deals than the pharmacies at Rite Aid and CVS. Wal-Mart prescription prices, which fell roughly in the middle of the group surveyed, also varied significantly from place to place, depending on the degree of local competition.

In the days that followed my shopping spree, I decided to do some comparative shopping at various stores in my neighborhood in northwest Washington, DC. It is true that for most of the generic items, Wal-Mart offered prices about 5 to 10 percent less than what I could find locally. Applying the upper end, I "saved" about $27.50.5