Small Business Owner? Here are 3 Tips on How to Handle Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is a scourge on small towns and small business across America. If you haven't seen this frightening map yet, Wal-Mart has been invading communities nationwide for decades like a virus. But a new study out of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business has some advice about how small businesses can cope.

The Independent Street blog at the Wall Street Journal (which is usually an apologist for Wal-Mart's reckless and ugly business practices) reports:

"The study found that after a new Wal-Mart store opened, local supermarkets in seven regions of the U.S. suffered sales declines of 17%, while mass merchandisers saw sales fall 40% and drug stores saw a 6% decline in sales."

Independent Street also offers a cheat sheet from the study on how to combat the Bentonville behemoth. Basically, it suggests that local businesses shouldn't try to out-do Wal-Mart at their own game of selling Chinese crap at next to nothing. Instead...

1. Supermarkets should offer deeper promotions and begin selling a higher percentage of top-tier national brands and private labels.

2. Drug stores should offer frequent promotions on a wide assortment of products and increase the total variety of products they sell.

3. Mass merchandisers, though, have no choice but to reduce prices but not reduce the assortment of their products.

The sad fact is that Wal-Mart is here to stay. Similar to some diseases, it's impossible to get rid of but possible to manage. I'm doing some work with Wake Up Wal-Mart and our goal isn't to eliminate the Bentonville behemoth, but to force it to reform for the good of the country. Hope these suggestions help for the short term, but if you're looking to tackle the long-term challenge, join me at Wake Up Wal-Mart today!