Quote Originally Posted by soonerguru View Post

So while not a monopoly, Wal-Mart's grocery presence here has certainly been outsized, and undoubtedly affected the quality of competition we would have seen here.
Now that's a reasonable (not to mention accurate) way to characterize it.

No problem with the discussion about quality or quantity of retailers. I just want to encourage the discussion to pivot on facts, that's all.

The only thing I'd add is that Oklahoma City's market was arguably underserved before WalMart showed up. There was a period in the 90's or thereabouts where a great many of the locally owned grocers, such as Buchanan's, Pratt's, some of the IGA stores, started struggling before WM showed up. Homeland, nee Safeway, bounced around for a time, Albertsons (nee Skaggs) was around for a while, but others came in and failed, such as Food Lion. I recall reading a business/news article about the grocery issue in OK, back when there were first rumblings of WM coming in, and the story focused on the fact that there were more than a few studies out there that indicated the OKC area could support several other grocers, and thus one could argue that WM came in and filled that void, at least to a degree.