Normally, a new Walmart Supercenter going up around here draws a lot of attention and excitement — positive and negative. Some folks get all riled up about traffic, while others are busting at the seams to drop their cash there.

To me that seems to me like a lot of Walmarts in a county of 230,000 people. But to Scott Testa, a professor of business administration at Cabrini College in Philadelphia, it seems “not unusual at all.”

“When it comes to saturation it seems like a lot, but they like to go in areas and really dominate,” Testa said. “And the Supercenter format is really what they see their future in — they see the growth in the grocery sector, and that’s where they’re building a lot of momentum.”

While a lot of retail has been smarting during the Great Recession, Walmart keeps chugging along — overall, net sales for the fourth quarter of 2010 were $112.8 billion, up 4.6 percent. Worldwide, it operates 8,416 stores and Sam’s Club locations, employing more than 2.1 million people.

But, as Testa notes, we’ve probably gotten to the point where all the businesses that would’ve have been driven out by Walmart are already gone.

Testa, the college professor, said Walmart historically is “known as the most anti-union organization that exists,” but he also noted that the company has to compete on the open market for employees, “and it’s supply and demand.”

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20100221/NEWS01/302210056

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