Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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

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.

I just started reading this book and I'm already blown away by the world it is revealing to me! Reading how Wal-Mart has corrupted the free enterprise system by manipulating all the mechanisms that enable/encourage fair trade, competition, market demand, consumer preference, cultural uniqueness, etc. was startling. And the part about how Wal-Mart is slowing gnawing its way inside the manufacturers to the point where it requires a company to buy raw materials from Wal-Mart, and soon won't even buy goods but will expect manufacturers to provide goods on consignment! I know that doesn't sound dramatic, but consider what happens when Wal-Mart tells P&G that it must have 100 cases of a new product in every store, in spite of what P& G's projections say the market demand is. The market doesn't go for the product, so only 60 cases are sold per store. Wal-Mart has no risk because they don't own the merchandise. So P&G has to eat the loss somehow. And as the book showed, if a company says no to Wal-Mart, they get kicked out of the store and the sudden loss of revenue can and has bankrupted companies. Good God!! And of course, Wal-Mart isn't the only one doing this.

Reading this book is like accidentally walking into a store's backroom and coming across some dirty sweatshop where everyone is in chains. Then some cleancut, smiling guy hooks your arm, leads you out and gives you some urgent story about how they're trying valiantly to keep such conditions from being necessary in every store in the world. Then stuffs a 30%-off coupon into your hand and guides you to the weekly sale rack.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a guy who likes popping into Target, Home Depot and a host of other chains. But seeing behind the shiny laminated displays makes you think....

There's one sure-fire way to tell if you'll like this book. If you just love shopping, buying, roaming around, reacting to the price-tags in mamouth-sized stores ... then you'll hate Stacy Mitchell's work. She doesn't have much to say about the big-box stores that's flattering, so you may immediately get defensive if not offended about the way she reveals the "inside baseball" on how the corporate structures of these stores go about their business.

-But going the complimentary route isn't her direction. Author Mitchell takes the mega-retailers to the mat and delivers a carefully thought-out knockout punch to the notion that The Big Box Stores exist for other than their own mega-huge profits. She's put together tough details about the operation of these mammoth stores ... the Walmarts, Targets, Best-Buys, Borders, Walgreen's, Albertson's, among many others ... and tells how and why they control shoppers, communities and local governments. Our eyes bug wide open ... as she explains how the big-box stores' steady growth is not about top-flight business practices or high-quality customer-service in a free marketplace. They get bigger and bigger, Mitchell claims, pretty much because they're already big. -And they all expect to get even larger, stronger and will exert expanded control over consumers, manufacturers, employees, governments, environments.

For instance, Mitchell says, Big-Boxers regularly take over small town business districts and even encroach on established, well-run big-city small businesses. Their local buildup is most always sanctioned by local governments through, among other things, giant tax breaks to these massive companies. -And in the process, they ruin small businesses, eliminate jobs, trample on the environment, and destroy many a long and happy career.

Four stars for this absorbing read (maybe 4½)... but could be five were it not for too often getting bogged down in more retail-detail than we ever want/need to know about. The on-and-on descriptions of operations of the giant stores (in part one) and of the local citizenry who are fighting (in part two) the take-overs and expansions are sometimes enough to make a reader's focus drift and eyes wander.

-But, what's not to like about a book that tries to objectively reveal the retail smoke and mirrors that's going on all around us...and the behind-the-scenes action of local citizens trying to put a stop to the bigger-n-bigger-big-box frenzy? There are few reasons not to appreciate this incredibly informative book about the sometimes-daft shopping culture we live in ... unless, of course, you're interested in nothing more than scouting out the latest big-box "New Low Price."

This book is scary. The author goes through many case studies and examples of the horrible things we're allowing to happen in our communities --- all in the name of promised "economic growth". I think every city planner should read this book. Anyone interested in saving what's left of our communities should read it. Even if you are skeptical of the author's conclusions, the copious bibliography can point you to the sources of her information and many other articles on the subject.

She sometimes repeats stories in different chapters, which can be annoying. However, I enjoyed reading the book because each time I had a questions, the author would answer it in subsequent paragraphs or chapters.

My copy of this book will be passed around to everyone that I can get to read it.

An absolutely necessity, especially for people living in areas where a new "big box" is being considered.

The intricate financial benefits to the corporation are absolutely staggering.

This book should be required reading for all elected officials....especially those in city and county government. Mitchell backs up her findings with documented studies. A fascinating look at just how manipulated we are as consumers....and we allow it to happen!

Very well researched and documented. Easy and interesting read, even an involved story at times. I liked the book and the presentation very much. I have corners turned on many pages. I feel better now whenever I shop locally (non-big box)... and I find the price difference not that dramatic.

Read this book. It's not easy, the truth can sometimes be painful and disturbing. But if you want to be educated, if you want to really goes on in the world of big-box stores you should read this. All is not what it seems. It's well written, incredibly detailed, the research that went into it is impressive. You owe it to every small business, every downtown in America to at least be informed. And, it's empowering, it lets you know what you can do to fight these mega corporations and reclaim America.