• Marketplace, Tuesday, November 24, 2009 10:47 AM

Steve Henn takes a look at Wal-Mart's advertised claim that it saves you money -- about $3,100 per family, in fact -- even if you don't shop there personally. That's because competitors have to drop their prices, too, of course.

IHS Global Insight's Chris Hollings, who led the research that Wal-Mart uses, puts a bit of a footnote on the claim. Prices for retail goods are 3.6% lower across the board because of the chain, IHS found, but to save more than $3,000 a year, an "average family" would have to spend more than $83,000 shopping.

Charles Fishman, who wrote The Wal-Mart Effect, says that the median U.S. household income is less than $51,000 and that the average family actually saves about $640 a year. But, he points out, that's enough to pay for a new big screen TV -- the better, I suppose, to watch the Wal-Mart ads on.

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