Paul McFedries

The Wal-Mart Effect is a 2006 book by business journalist Charles Fishman, a senior editor at Fast Company magazine, which describes local and global economic effects attributable to the retail chain Walmart. In the book, Fishman writes that Walmart is arguably the world's most important privately controlled economic institution, and that the phrase "the Wal-Mart effect" is shorthand for a wide range of both positive and negative impacts on consumers resulting from how Walmart does its business. He describes these effects as including the suburbanization of the local shopping experience, the driving down of local prices for all everyday necessities, the draining of the viability of the traditional local shopping areas, a continual downward pressure on local wages, the consolidation of consumer product companies aiming to match Walmart's scale, a continual downward pressure on inflation, and a new and continual cost scrutiny at a wide range of businesses enabling them to survive on thinner profit margins. Fishman concludes that Walmart is "beyond the market forces that capitalism relies on to enforce fair play [and] isn't subject to the market forces because it's creating them." Fishman did not coin the phrase Wal-Mart effect. It has been traced back to 1990, when journalist Julie Morris used it in a USA Today story.