Last year at the now-defunct Revolution, I noticed (and naturally reported) that even though Wal-mart owns my area (the nearest non-Wal-mart department store is an hour’s drive in any direction), the parking lots at the two stores close to me were surprisingly empty during the week before Christmas when you would have expected them to be over-flowing. It turned out that Wal-mart didn’t have a very good season last year; sales were down some 3-4%, which gave WM’s corporate honchos the willies.
Given that my little survey seemed to have some validity in the real world, I decided to do it again this year and here are the results: Mixed. Continue reading