Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses [Hardcover]

Stacy Mitchell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2006

Large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America and are rapidly transforming our economy, communities, and landscape. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising water pollution and diminished civic engagement.

Mitchell's investigation takes us from the suburbs of Cleveland to a fruit farm in California, the stockroom of an Oregon Wal-Mart, and a Pennsylvania town's Main Street. She uncovers the shocking role government policy has played in the expansion of mega-retailers and builds a compelling case that communities composed of many small businesses are healthier and more prosperous than those dominated by large chains.

More than a critique, Big-Box Swindle draws on real life to show how some communities are successfully countering the spread of mega-retailers and rebuilding their local economies. Mitchell describes innovative approaches-from cutting-edge land-use policies to small-business initiatives-that together provide a detailed road map to a more prosperous and sustainable future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mitchell, chair of the American Independent Business Alliance, has produced a compelling indictment of Wal-Mart and other "big box" stores, based on numerous national examples. Deep-pocketed chains like Home Depot flood the market to drive out competition, she points out, then advertise some products at or below cost, while most other products may offer no better value than at independent stores. Meanwhile, she argues, independent businesses not only return profits to local communities and remain more civic-minded and accountable, but offer resiliency rooted in diversity, in contrast to the big-box "monocrop." She even provides evidence that Wal-Mart lowers, rather than boosts community economic well-being, and that firms with fewer than 100 employees give twice as much in charity per employee as those with more than 500 workers. Mitchell challenges Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory, suggesting that an indie bookseller's passion about a product can be more critical to its sales than wide access via a Web retailer. Mitchell catalogues diverse ways indie-minded consumers can fight back, by campaigning against government subsidies to big-box stores, and advocating for sales tax collection on Internet sales and stronger antitrust enforcement. Visible citizens' coalitions can fight big-box expansion, especially if communities fine-tune their land use policies. The big-box trend, she suggests, can be countered by increasing public awareness. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Across the U.S., large retail chain stores have created a monoculture of automobile-based shopping, driving out independently owned businesses and decimating downtown shopping districts. The numbers are staggering--Wal-Mart, the big gorilla, now receives 10 percent of American's spending dollars, and Home Depot gobbles up nearly half of all home-improvement sales. Mitchell, an advisor to communities on retail development and independent business, compares these companies' tactics to European colonialism--they enter a community and plunder its resources, rather than adding value and enhancing the local economy. Gobbling up land, creating sprawl, and even knocking down historical landmarks in their quest for total dominance, these powerful corporations let nothing stand in their way. From shrinking the middle class to diminishing culture and landscape, the effects of the big-box retailers are far reaching, but Mitchell has uncovered a movement to curb the proliferation of the megaretailers and create policies that favor local enterprises. Her call to action reveals the hidden costs of those "low prices" promoted by the big-box bullies and gives hope to local entrepreneurs and concerned citizens alike. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press; annotated edition edition (November 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807035009
• ISBN-13: 978-0807035009
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,490,132 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Busting the BIG BOX Myth, November 10, 2006

By 

D. A. Keenan - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (Hardcover)

I have been eagerly awaiting Stacy Mitchell's follow up to her earlier book Hometown Advantage, which was invaluable in understanding the planning process, zoning, and how development decisions are made at the local level. It became my "bible" in understanding a complex process and helping to preserve and protect my community from the impact of large scale incompatible development.
Her follow up--BIG Box SWINDLE defrocks the myth making and PR that BIG BOXES use to not only financially swindle communities but also to influence your local decision makers. All is done in the innocent sounding name of "economic development".
BIG BOX SWINDLE includes greater detail and more research based information on the negative impact of the BIG Boxes on communities and their economy. It reveals the mythmaking for what it is: a well financed fraud on the community. Only after the community has become trapped in the web of myths, are the true costs to the community revealed, often, too late to reverse direction.
BIG BOX SWINDLE is an easy read. Each chapter can be read on their own independently. Each chapter focuses on different aspects of this myth making swindle. It gives those who value locally owned and grown communities, the information needed to preserve them. Information can be used to bust the BIG BOX's myths and to help decision makers make better and wiser economic decisions.
Mitchell's recounting of real life experience of those average citizens paving a better path for communities is heartening and hopeful.
Big Box Swindle is a "must read" for anyone wanting to preserve the integrity of their community and for those rejecting the negative aspects of the global economy.
It should be required reading for all decision makers---Councilors, Planning Board Members,legislators, Economic Development Directors--- before making decisions.
This is another slam dunk for Mitchell, well researched, well articulated. Every page is filled with her well researched knowledge and experience. She makes the complex, understandable. It will be another well used resource to help change the direction of communities.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's not just consumer desire which drives big box store expansions, December 10, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (Hardcover)

Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses goes beyond most similar condemnations of big retailers to outline just how their domination is dangerous to society - and then moves on to show how citizens are fighting the phenomenon. Since 2000 nearly two hundred big-box development projects have been halted by citizens groups and communities across the U.S. are banding together to keep them out, recognizing the value in locally owned, independent businesses. It's not just consumer desire which drives big box store expansions; it's public policy and politics: BIG BOX SWINDLE documents these factors and is an important acquisition for any public or college-level library concerned with consumer and business issues, trends, and influences.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loss of community, February 14, 2007

By 

52 weeks, 52 books (ID) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (Hardcover)

If you think the big boxes help the working man and woman, you really need to read this book. Mitchell details the drop in wages and living standards throughout the affected areas, loss of support for local development, increase in abandoned buildings and water pollution, and the blackmail of civic leaders. As for the prices, she illustrates that prices do not stay low once the competition has been dealt with. I really appreciate the variety of ways she measures community, e.g. Costco rates well for putting money into an area through good wages but poorly for its failure to offer local products.