Globalization of Food Retailing and the Consequences of Walmartization in Mexico
Forthcoming in S. Brunn, ed., WAL-MART WORLD (Routledge)

James J. Biles
Department of Geography
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI USA 49008-5424
james.biles@wmich.edu

ABSTRACT

The impact of Wal-Mart on its competitors, suppliers, employees and the communities where it locates has received considerable attention in the United States for more than a decade. Only recently, however, have social scientists turned their attention to the international dimensions of Wal-Mart’s emergence as the world’s largest corporation. To date, the majority of international research has been carried out in Europe. Perhaps the two best known case studies are Wal-Mart’s foray into Germany and its takeover of the British retailer Asda in 1999. This chapter places Wal-Mart’s emergence as an international retailer into the broader context of the globalization of retailing and focuses on its impacts in Mexico, a less developed country and its first, and perhaps most successful, international market. More specifically, this study reveals how Wal-Mart’s dominance of the Mexican retail sector has transformed the practices of domestic supermarket chains, modified supply chain relationships with food producers, brought about opportunities and challenges for small-scale farmers, and generated uncertainty for the country’s informal economy.