When Wal-Mart Doesn’t Come to Town: Competitive Responses of Established Retail Merchants in Edenton, North Carolina

The study of retail geography is moving beyond an orthodox, spatial science tradition to include a consideration of the cultural and symbolic dimensions of retailing and consumption. This paper contributes to this emerging literature by exploring the cultural politics of retail change. The entry of a large format (or “big box”) retailer into a community is conceptualized as a socially contested process open to a variety of responses from local stakeholders. In the late 1990s, a coalition composed of elected officials, private citizens, and area business and property owners contested a possible plan to locate a Wal-Mart store in Edenton, a small town in eastern North Carolina. One of the key products of this oppositionmovement was the organization of local businesses into a merchants guild. The guild, which still operates today, devised several initiatives to increase the competitiveness, efficiency, and image of established retail merchants in Edenton. Guild members envisioned these measures as a means of protecting the local commercial sector from another possible Wal-Mart entry as well as satisfying and servicing consumers who originally supported the arrival of the large discount retailer. Specifically, the merchants guild implemented five major competitive responses: (1) pooling of advertising revenue; (2) redefining of market area; (3) coordinating of special discount sales opportunities; (4) coalition building with nondowntown businesses; and (5) coalition building with existing retail chains. Each of these initiatives allowed businesses in the guild to think and act as a large unified economic landscape rather than simply individual entrepreneurs. The events in Edenton allow us to investigate how Wal-Mart can impact local retail practices, even when the chain does not come to town.