Ethnography Of Walmart

Walmart: A Mini Ethnography. Last week I visited Walmart. During the night hours around 8-9pm Monday and Wednesday. To provide some context to what Walmart is, Walmart is a popular American supermarket chain founded by James and Sam Walton in 1962, in Arkansas. Over the past several decades, Walmart has grown to be one of the largest and most popular supermarket chains in the United States, available in every state and many cities, including here in Flagstaff, Arizona. There are two Walmart’s here in Flagstaff and on those nights, I went to the one on Woodlands Village Blvd, near the NAU campus. After work, I headed to the Walmart, parking my car towards the back of the parking lot, I headed my way into the Walmart entrance. I entered through

Employees could be found walking around the whole store and most of the time just kept to themselves, doing their job unless a customer came up to ask a question. Cashiers and self-checkout attendants were all pretty friendly and offered to help. One thing to note about the checkouts is that older people tended to go to the traditional registers more and younger people preferred the self-checkouts. Some overarching details of Walmart include the focus on low prices, clearance and rollback signs that can be found all around. The main colors of Walmart were very clearly blue and yellow, with those colors present in many elements of Walmart’s fixtures. This Walmart was pretty clean and was probably updated recently. Some unique features of this Walmart include the NAU merch section, which takes up part of the clothes department. The size of the Walmart was also fairly small compared to other Walmart’s I’ve been to. The liquor section was also in a separate room, and it had its own register near the entrance. As I walked back to my car, I noticed that the parking lot was large, even considering this is a smaller Walmart. Walmart is an important part of the American