Final answer:
Walmart's dominance is due to Sam Walton's strategy of lowering prices through efficient production models and cost structures, often impacting local economies and smaller competitors negatively.
Step-by-step explanation:
The dominance of Walmart can be attributed to Sam Walton's realization that large-scale retailing could succeed by offering lower prices to consumers through a tight cost structure and efficient production models. By leveraging economies of scale, Walmart was able to offer lower prices than locally owned businesses, which often resulted in these smaller competitors being unable to match Walmart's costs and prices, leading to their decline or closure. Walton's strategy included negotiating aggressively with suppliers to reduce costs and then passing those savings on to customers, which became a cornerstone of Walmart's business model.
Moreover, the concept of "Wal-Martization" suggests that this approach had broader economic implications, such as paying lower wages and offering minimal benefits, which affected the circulation of money within local economies and often led to a deterioration of local business ecosystems.
When considering this information within a functionalist perspective, one might argue that Walmart's model is aimed at providing the maximum benefit to core nation consumers through the lowest possible prices, which in turn contributes to consumer satisfaction and corporate profitability, albeit with significant trade-offs in terms of local economic health and employee welfare.