Both loved and hated by shoppers worldwide, the Wal-Mart family of discount stores has grown in less than forty years from a single business in a small Arkansas town in 1962 to one of the world's largest corporations. Wal-Mart operated eleven hundred stores around the world in the year 2000. The Wal-Mart strategy of combining low prices with a huge inventory and attentive customer service has changed retail sales practices across the United States. Many complain that large Wal-Mart stores change the nature of the towns where they open by taking business away from small, locally owned shops and forcing them to close. Others, however, cheer the coming of Wal-Mart to their town, because the stores make available a wide variety of goods at prices that working families can afford.

From a small beginning in 1962, Wal-Mart grew into a billion-dollar empire by the end of the twentieth century. AP/Wide...