[bombcar]

The corner grocery store (a regular one literally a block away) is fine for many things for me - 10-20% more is fine and saves a trip.

But too many things are literally twice as much and for those the value of a Walmart trip is obvious.

[petsfed]

My point is that American suburbs are so aggressively designed for cars that even considerable cost and inconvenience (driving 30-40 minutes) is acceptable in the face of much MUCH lower prices (even if the prices are so low because the quality is commensurately lower as in e.g. Levi jeans since they started selling in Walmart). If we hadn't let our communities be planned around driving to begin with, then building a big box would be less effective.

People are so habituated to driving, and the walking/biking experience outside of inner cities so unpleasant, that the corner stores simply cannot compete. Of course a big box store is going to have better prices, they win on economies of scale. But we've allowed our cities to be designed around the total separation of residence and commerce, so that you have to drive an interminable distance on unpleasant, congested roads just to get to an ersatz corner store. May as well drive to Walmart.