Florence Ipaye

The presence of Walmart stores in local communities has always been known to shape the retail landscape. The Walmart phenomenon has created a popular perception of adversely impacting small businesses in its vicinity. This paper examines the impact of Walmart discount and supercentre stores on a number of small businesses in the consistently-sized city of St. Catharines and its neighbouring non-Walmart towns from 2008 through 2015. This MRP will use empirical techniques to delineate trade areas around the Walmart stores of interest, identify the retail composition around each store, and using trend series analysis to gain insight on the pattern of retail environment created over the study period.

The findings within St. Catharines and adjacent non-Walmart towns reveal an increased incidence of store vacancies around the Walmart stores, whether or not they were supercentres or discount stores. Though nearby retailers have been possibly detrimentally impacted, commercial establishments that do not compete directly with Walmart fared much better.

Furthermore, as it is consistent with findings in previous studies, Walmart’s presence was found to enhance the growth of the food services or restaurant industry for all trade areas analyzed, and adversely impacted Furniture and Home Furnishing and Clothing and Clothing Accessories stores categories. These investigations are helpful to better understand the implications of Walmart stores on their respective communities and aid local community leaders and stakeholders to make more informed decisions within the Canadian marketplace.

Key words: Walmart, small business, small towns, St. Catharines