Where do Americans shop? In chain stores, of course! Love 'em or hate 'em - chain stores are a fact of life in most parts of the United States of america.
Kaitlyn Wells of MarketWatch took data from Morgan Stanley's annual retail atlas to create a series of maps delineating the different chain stores that dominate the retail landscape of the nation's shopping habits. Morgan Stanley's data lists 119 of the country's largest retail chains and their locations across the states.
Take a look at the shopping maps of the United States:
View more maps and analysis over at MarketWatch.
I definitely wonder if they counted Fred Meyers with Krogers (they should be, they are the same just a different name for tradition's sake) though, because I find it especially hard to believe Whole Foods beat them all along the west coast - especially when the natural foods market is split with strong competition local chains like New Seasons in Oregon, and in recent years, Fred Meyers themselves.
My state being "dominated" by Cato seems laughable, because everyone buys their clothing at Walmart, Kmart, or JC Penney. Cato is a tiny little store for teenagers. And if Kmart is a department store, where is Walmart?
Strange that my state is dominated by the only athletic shoe store I've never heard of. But my small town has rather few stores at all.
Ah, I see Walmart is in another chart, labeled "discount stores," although you'd be hard pressed to tell it from a Kmart except for size. And I see that the stats are for how many stores are in a state, not the amount of sales they make. My town has four Dollar Generals, but if you combined them, they'd still be much smaller than the one Walmart store here.