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Facts About: | WalMart.ca | Wal-Mart.ca | WalMart Canada | Wal-Mart Canada | ww.walmart.ca

Wal-Mart Canada (Walmart.ca) is the Canadian unit of Wal-Mart and was founded in 1994 in Mississauga, Ontario with the purchase of the Canadian Woolco stores.

Wal-Mart typically competes with Zellers, Canadian Tire, Hart Stores, Giant Tiger, and Real Canadian Superstore, Costco, and increasingly grocery stores such as Loblaw and Sobeys-Thrifty Foods, Safeway, Save-On-Foods, Country Grocer, Fairway Markets, others.
 

Beginning in the fall of 2006, Wal-Mart opened new Supercentres in select Canadian cities with 14 new stores by the end of 2007. Sam's Club locations already carry limited grocery items in Canada.

Wal-Mart has been the subject of some criticism by certain groups who claim that Wal-Mart has lower labour standards than other similar retailers. Other criticisms centre around the claim that due to their low prices they drive out local businesses.

For employees with over 5 years of experience, the wages at most Walmart stores are $1-$2 an hour less than most other retailers in Canada. Walmart also has a policy that workers must not discuss their wages with each other, which is consistent with other retailers in North America. This is due to the fact that multiple workers doing the same job sometimes get paid different salaries based on work experience or education.

About 40% of products sold in Wal-Mart are private label store brands, or products offered by Wal-Mart and produced through subsidized contracts awarded to the lowest bidder. Wal-Mart began offering private label brands in 1991 with the launch of Sam's Choice, a brand of drinks produced by Cott Beverages exclusively for Wal-Mart. Sam's Choice quickly became popular, and by 1993 was the third beverage brand in the United States. Other Wal-Mart brands include Great Value and Equate in the US and Smart Price in Britain. A 2006 study talked of "the magnitude of mind-share Wal-Mart appears to hold in shoppers' minds when it comes to awareness of private label brands and retailers."

In North America, Wal-Mart's primary competition includes department stores like Kmart, Target, ShopKo, Meijer, and Canada's Zellers, Winners, and Giant Tiger. Competitors of Wal-Mart's Sam's Club division are Costco, and the smaller BJ's Wholesale Club chain operating mainly in the eastern US.

Wal-Mart's move into the grocery business in the late 1990s also set it against major supermarket chains in both the United States and Canada. Several smaller retailers, primarily dollar stores, such as Family Dollar and Dollar General, have been able to find a small niche market and compete successfully against Wal-Mart for home consumer sales. In 2004, Wal-Mart responded by testing its own dollar store concept, a subsection of some stores called "Pennies-n-Cents."