Wal Mart
I live in Mentor, Ohio, a suburb about thirty-five miles east of Cleveland. It used to be all greenhouses, until a few decades ago when it began the process of commercialization, along with other neighboring cities. Big-name stores moved into town, slowly at first. After awhile, along came a shopping mall and stores such as K-Mart. These businesses really began to change the community for the better. As the area became more developed, more people moved there. Eventually Wal-Mart made its way into town. The onset of competition forced K-mart to relocate (less than a mile down the road from the original site, across the street from where the Wal-Mart was being built) and upgrade to a Super K-Mart Center. The difference between K-Mart and Super K-Mart is that Super K-Mart has everything that regular K-Mart has, but it is now also equipped with a complete grocery section. This enables customers to do all of their shopping in one location.It all started in 1962. The first Wal-Mart Discount City opened that year in Rogers, Arkansas, and the franchise has been growing exponentially ever since. In 1980 there were 276 stores, and in the year 2000, there are more than 3,400 Wal-Marts in
every state of the USA and a handful of foreign countries. These countries include Germany, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, and Korea, to name a few. Wal-Mart has aspirations to be globally recognized like McDonald's and Coca-Cola. In the article "Wal-Mart's War on Main Street," by Sarah Anderson, it is correctly stated that "rural life is changing and there's no use denying it." (Anderson 139) Even without imposing businesses, the technological advances of today make the world smaller and smaller. It used to be that in rural places there would be one farm and then nothing for miles. There wasn't much contact with people outside of one's family. Today anyone on a farm can have all the necessities and luxuries of life, and with the use of the Internet can easily contact anyone anywhere in the world. These simple facts alone provide evidence that rural life is changing. Until now, I had no idea that Wal-Mart was thought of as villainous. My neighborhood did not change because of the new Wal-Mart as much as it did from the rest of the new stores sprouting up in the area. Communities are learning to adapt to these new conditions. Rural life is changing, and people have to deal with it. Not all of Main Street's stores will stay in business and those who have to quit may be able to find better jobs once their community is developed. In conclusion, Wal-Mart is not a villain and does not move into small towns with the sole intent of "killing" "Ma & Pa" stores! Even so, for those consumers without Internet access, disco
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Approximate Word count = 1025
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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