RETAIL HAS ALWAYS BEEN A GAME of survival of the fittest. Morn-and-pop stores suc-cumbed to department stores, which inturn were battered by shopping malls and dis-counters. But no retail concept has been moreprofoundly disruptive than category killers-"big-box" specialty stores like Barnes & Noble,PETsMART, and Circuit City-and no singlestore has ever dominated the retail food chainlike Wal-Mart.
In Category Killers, veteran journalist RobertSpector argues that these retail giants havedone more than dramatically alter our buyingexperience. They've also ingeniously rewrittenthe retail playbook and, in the process, foreveraltered cultural and economic factors fromtraffic patterns and land-use legislation to taxa-tion, migration, and employment. Critics con-tend that "mega-retailers" have destroyed theneighborhood and ruthlessly wiped out compe-tition. Yet these retailers have also undeniably democratized consumption, making just about everything affordable to just about anyone.
