American Decades
Wal-Mart
New Ideas.
Founded in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 1962, the Wal-Mart chain of discount stores helped revolutionize the retail industry. Disregarding the conventional wisdom of retailing, that a store must be located in an area with a population of at least one hundred thousand, Wal-Mart in the 1970s opened its stores in markets with less than twenty-five thousand potential customers. This unusual approach took advantage of the growth of small towns in the South and the concentration of larger retailers, such as K-Mart and Sears, on locating in larger cities and suburbs. As these larger markets became saturated with stores, the retailing giants began to move to the smaller markets where Wal-Mart was now preeminent. Not accustomed to the aggressive marketing and pricing strategy of Wal-Mart, the larger chains found it difficult to compete.
Ambitious Expansion.
In the late 1970s Wal-Mart entered into an aggressively...
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1970's Business and the Economy
