Actually, that's not really fair. There have been real advances in the technology of retail in the 19th and 20th Centuries, and I expect more in the 21st. The department store didn't exist in 1800. Sears and Piggly-Wiggly were revolutionaries in retail. Even the soon to be extinct K-Mart was very innovative in its heyday. Wal-Mart brought real technological innovation to retail, mostly through application of economies of scale, affordable price-points, and really-really innovative inventory and other cost-control techniques that rely heavilly on communication, IT control, and business organization.
Wal-Mart doesn't sell hightech products. Wal-Mart *IS* a high-tech product. > I had no idea that Wal-Mart was so big - it's only 40 years old and a > purely traditional empire, not relying on a new product/concept like MS, > Intel and Cisco. > It's a fairly arbitrary measure of course. Many sources I searched > listed GE, Intel, Cisco and MS as the biggest (presumably using market > capitalisation) depending (again, presumably) on the share prices of the > day. Australia doesn't have a single Wal-Mart, though we have K-Mart and > Target. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
