There is one place in America where consumers can find anything they could ever think of, from gardening tools to personalized jewelry and contact lenses: Computers, textbooks, vacuums, pet food, maternity clothing, baby car seats, scooters, video games, air guns, trampolines, health insurances, sports nutrition products and pastry supplies. This place is called Wal-Mart, the world’s most powerful retail company and an inspirational symbol of America’s business success. Wal-Mart has received a great deal of criticism concerning both employment and environmental issues. Nonetheless, taking into consideration its billions in revenue, its position as the biggest retail company in the world, and its groundbreaking and transformative business performance…show more content… Wal-Mart invests in projects that generate profits which satisfy both their shareholders and local economic development. Proof of this is that a common local practice often relies on attracting a national chain store to the area. Wal-Mart pioneered the usage of the bar code in the early 1980s in an attempt of increasing efficiency by lowering inventory costs. By using the bar code, information was exchanged from stores straight to manufacturers, so they could deliver supplies when it was really necessary. Therefore, consumers’ behavior and preferences were tracked so warehouses were not needed (Hornblower). In 1985, Walton and Glass developed Retail Link, a system that helped track a wide range of information about consumer behavior and costed nearly $4 billion until making it perfect (Hornblower). Economists even refer to the "Wal-Mart effect" as a phenomenon that has smothered the rise of prices and has increased manufacturing profits for quite a long time (Bianco and Zellner). Both Barry Lynn in his Harper's essay Breaking the Chain, and Charles Fishman in his book The Wal-Mart Effect, agree that Wal-Mart has remodeled both the American and the global economy (qtd. in…show more content… Wal-Mart’s size and power have allowed the company to easily influence both competitors and suppliers in order to give the consumer the lowest price possible (Bianco and Zellner). Wal-Mart built its business model with the goal of pleasing the consumer above all. Everything in Wal-Mart was consumer-oriented, and now it has grown so much that has forced suppliers and other retailers to become all about the costumer too (Useem). Wal-Mart’s principal aim and most important marketing secret weapon are saving consumers’ money. That is why the company’s slogan, “Everyday low prices,” became the perfect summary for Wal-Mart’s corporate culture and business model. The retail giant owes its success to large amounts of money reduced in manufacturing expenses over the years. It is estimated that Wal-Mart helped American consumers save around $100 billion last