"But they are also better, our competitors are better because Wal-Mart exists"
About this Quote
A little corporate jujitsu is happening here: Lee Scott takes the most common accusation leveled at Wal-Mart (it crushes rivals) and flips it into a civic-sounding virtue. The line is engineered to make a behemoth read like a public service. Competitors are not merely surviving, he implies, they are improving - innovating, cutting prices, streamlining - because they have no choice. In one breath, market dominance becomes market discipline.
The phrasing does extra work. "They are also better" is a concession without naming the harm. Better for whom: shoppers, workers, suppliers, communities? The sentence refuses to specify, because specificity would invite the messy receipts: wage pressures, supplier squeeze, small-town retail collapse. Scott’s subtext is that the pain is productive, the disruption ultimately ennobling. It’s the survival-of-the-fittest story told with a customer-service smile.
Context matters: Scott led Wal-Mart through years when the company was both an avatar of low-cost efficiency and a symbol of what that efficiency extracts. Saying competitors are "better because Wal-Mart exists" is an attempt to reframe scale as inevitability and influence as beneficence. The company isn’t just winning, it’s improving the entire ecosystem.
It’s also a warning disguised as praise. If Wal-Mart is the standard-setter, everyone else is measured against it. "Better" can mean more ruthless, more automated, more optimized. The line asks the public to applaud that race, and to treat Wal-Mart not as a participant in the market but as the force that defines it.
The phrasing does extra work. "They are also better" is a concession without naming the harm. Better for whom: shoppers, workers, suppliers, communities? The sentence refuses to specify, because specificity would invite the messy receipts: wage pressures, supplier squeeze, small-town retail collapse. Scott’s subtext is that the pain is productive, the disruption ultimately ennobling. It’s the survival-of-the-fittest story told with a customer-service smile.
Context matters: Scott led Wal-Mart through years when the company was both an avatar of low-cost efficiency and a symbol of what that efficiency extracts. Saying competitors are "better because Wal-Mart exists" is an attempt to reframe scale as inevitability and influence as beneficence. The company isn’t just winning, it’s improving the entire ecosystem.
It’s also a warning disguised as praise. If Wal-Mart is the standard-setter, everyone else is measured against it. "Better" can mean more ruthless, more automated, more optimized. The line asks the public to applaud that race, and to treat Wal-Mart not as a participant in the market but as the force that defines it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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