The Wal-Mart Effect examines the ways in which corporate policies impact suppliers and competitors through the lens of the Wal-Mart corporation and its evolution over time. Charles Fishman narrows his interrogations to this billion-dollar corporation in order to consider how a single corporate entity has far-reaching effects on all of those organizations who work with, for, and around it. Fishman argues that Wal-Mart’s control of the national and global retail markets squeezes its suppliers and manipulates the quality, distribution, and prices of their products.

Fishman considers this notion by examining the effects of Wal-Mart’s relationships with a handful of its suppliers including Vlasic Pickles, Levi Strauss, and the L. R. Nelson sprinkler company. Through these examples, Fishman examines what effect a single buyer has had on these companies and their products. According to Fishman, these examples prove that “the impact of Wal-Mart’s scale and power” manipulates what citizens “think is a market economy” (82). Wal-Mart is such a large buyer of goods that “they constitute a threat to the free market,” Fishman holds, as they “can often defy the laws of supply, demand, and competition” (82, 83). For companies like Vlasic, Levi’s, and Nelson, Wal-Mart’s corporate commitment to offering low prices caused them to suffer.