Flowing map of the Growth of Walmart

[macker]

WMT went down 7.27% today on December sales estimate miss. In a lot of ways WMT is a direct reflection of the US economy Pretty impressive company though and I think they will survive the downturn

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by RT14

Yeah, it's interesting in South Eastern China as well. I was in Shenzhen for a few years and they had 3 or 4 huge Wal-Marts but only one Subway. Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and of course KFC were huge there though and Papa John's was coming on strong. Burger King did not exist there and I'm surprised to hear there are any in Shanghai too. Thought the only Chinese Burger King was in Hong Kong.

In Guangzhou, which is only a 2 hour drive from Shenzhen and has about 5 times the foreign population has no Wal-Marts, but way more Subways and there were at least 2 Dariy Queens here but one folded for sure, not sure of the other one. Starbucks of course is big everywhere.

Now, if someone can convince Tim Hortons or A&W to get their butts over here, I would personally keep them in business and know a ton of people that would help!

The Subway's here are reasonably limited, as are Burger King, but they're around. Dairy Queen is actually pretty popular here. I can think of a number of DQ's around Shanghai, though none of them have cookie dough blizzards.

[Swifty]

I wouldnt be suprised to see Wal-Mart sales increasing during recession.

Because of a decline in consumer spending people are more likely to spend money on the cheaper goods that Wal-Mart has in abundance rather then go to the higher end retailers. Wal-Mart likely has a lot of inferior goods as well (Goods in which quantity sold increases as income decreases).

It truly is amazing, I went in to one during the Holidays... it had been so long that I didn't know they sold groceries now.