When Sam Walton began Wal-Mart, how did he shake up the retail status quo?
In rural areas and just on the edge of the suburbs, there had always been chains of stores. They would sell not very good products, and sometimes they would have one or two sale items. They would try to get you in with the sale items and try to get you to buy other things. It was not a great system for ordinary people. Walton came along and he said, look, if I can get very good deals, I’m going to sell these products at a very low price. Everyday low prices. I’m going to do this very efficiently. I’m going to look at how I run my stores, much more than people used to do. I’m going to get rid of these traditional markups. I’m going to sell goods for as little as I can and grow my business. And that has been their policy ever since. Other people have adjusted to that, and now Wal-Mart is trying to adjust as well, adding more style, for example. Wal-Mart sold quality products at a very low price. After a while, they became large enough that they could actually negotiate lower prices from
