Wrd 103 - Wal-Mart Case

Janea Ortega

WRD 103

Prof. Plattner

5 May 2010

The Zoo

Wal-Mart, the all-American store that everyone goes to for just about anything and everything they need. However, what is so different between Wal-Mart and any other superstore in this country? The only way to answer this question is to simply go to Wal-Mart and find out myself. As I walk into the store, only about two feet away from the automatic door, I am already able to see everything and everyone’s actions around me. People are pushing carts filled with things, picking up clothes and closely examining the style, staring at products as if they are overwhelmed with all the choices they have, etc. The store is like a zoo, filled with free diverse animals just walking all over the place, touching, looking, and buying products. There are many different races of animals: Hispanic, Asian, African American, and some Caucasian that make the zoo so colorful. One thing that I notice is that there are a lot more colored and foreign people at Wal-Mart than there are Caucasians in Target.

I then ask myself, why is this store like this? Why is it that there are more colored and foreign people in this store? Wal-Mart appeals to lower or middle class people while Target appeals to upper and upper middle class people. The majority of upper and upper middle class are Caucasian, or white, whereas the majority of the lower and lower middle class consist of mainly colored and foreign people. Because Wal-Mart offers cheap products, it appeals to this economic class. Due to the lack of money or constantly having a tight budget, people in this economic class would prefer buying cheaper products that they need. I think that people who are very worried about money spend more time comparing prices in each store than anyone else does because they prefer buying the cheapest. For example, my mom was not born in this country and she has a habit of staying in a store for extremely long periods of time, comparing prices of each individual product in order to find the best deal. One day, we spent almost an entire day going around the Skokie area, trying to find a store that offers the cheapest brand of paper towels, only because she didn’t want to spend a lot of money on them. Being a cheap person, my mom is a good example of a typical customer at Wal-Mart. Another example of the economic class that Wal-Mart has is the fact that no one is dressed professionally. Either everyone who is shopping there has casual clothing, sleeping clothes, or even really dirty and torn up clothes. This also explains why there are a lot more homeless people present in Wal-Mart than there will ever be at Target. Since homeless people barely have any money for food or any necessities, they can easily go Wal-Mart and purchase anything