Sunday, January 22, 2006

 
I’m cataloging a symposium from the Vermont School of Law (“Small Town America in an era of Big Box Development”). Here’s an interesting quote: “Although [Wal-Mart] did not do quite as well on ‘Black Friday’ 2004, on Black Friday 2003 Wal-Mart sales of $1.43 billion exceeded the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 36 out of 183 ranked economies, including Tajikistan, Swaziland, Belize, Sierra Leone and Samoa. In a single day’s sales, Americans supported Wal-Mart with their purses and wallets, causing Wal-Mart sales to exceed an entire year’s GDP in at least thirty-six countries. In its Annual Report 2003, Wal-Mart reports total sales of $256.3 billion. In terms of GDP this makes Wal-Mart the eighteenth largest economy in the world, just after Switzerland and ahead of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Argentina, and Greece. Wal-Mart is a dominant force in moving product to market. To put this in some perspective, even if you took every man, woman, and child from Vermont, you would not be able to staff all of the world’s Wal-Marts.” (“Breaking Big Boxes: Learning from the Horse Whisperers" by Dwight H. Merriam”)He also has some interesting footnotes. “28% of Dial Soaps’ sales are through Wal-Mart.” “Country music stations predominate in this country—they have 2088 stations (of 10,754), while classical music stations rank a lowly twenty-ninth with just thirty-two stations. The industry identifies fourteen radio formats; 61% of the listeners tune into adult, contemporary, urban, Hispanic, country and rock music stations, while a mere 1.5% listens to classical." (From Radio Advertising Bureau, Radio Marketing Guide & Fact Book for Advertisers, 2003-2004.)
posted by Julie Dorn 7:11 PM