Of course they are not literally the same, but in the context of the particular article we are commenting on, both Aldi, Lidl and Walmart are large bureaucratic organizations (specialized in retail). They all benefit vastly from economics of scale and to increase output they have to create new stores and hire more people to run them (and increase the throughput of their supply chain).
I think the cruxes here are whether Aldi forced out small retailers like Walmart did; and how significant the difference between Walmart and Aldi is, compared to the difference between Aldi and large, successful retail orgs in wentworthland or christiankiland.
(my experience in German shopping is that most grocery stores are one of a half-dozen chains, most hardware stores are Bauhaus or OBI, but there isn’t a dominant “everything” store like Walmart; Müller might be closest but its market dominance and scale is more like K-mart in the 90′s than Walmart today.)
Of course they are not literally the same, but in the context of the particular article we are commenting on, both Aldi, Lidl and Walmart are large bureaucratic organizations (specialized in retail). They all benefit vastly from economics of scale and to increase output they have to create new stores and hire more people to run them (and increase the throughput of their supply chain).
I think the cruxes here are whether Aldi forced out small retailers like Walmart did; and how significant the difference between Walmart and Aldi is, compared to the difference between Aldi and large, successful retail orgs in wentworthland or christiankiland.
(my experience in German shopping is that most grocery stores are one of a half-dozen chains, most hardware stores are Bauhaus or OBI, but there isn’t a dominant “everything” store like Walmart; Müller might be closest but its market dominance and scale is more like K-mart in the 90′s than Walmart today.)