Predatory Business: Difference between revisions

Often employed as a [[Strawman Political]] to reprimand corporate businesses, but may sometimes be an accurate depiction of the dirty tricks that certain big companies use.

 

 

For Real Life examples, please keep in mind that as to what constitutes legitimate competition vs. underhanded business practices differs. In the interest of reducing natter, please confine this to fictional examples.

 

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== Film ==

** This trope is definitely in full effect at first. But it is also eventually subverted in that the megacorp is offering cheaper goods, but it still serves the community for the better, as can be seen when Meg Ryan is walking around the store, noticing that groups of adults and children alike are scattered around reading books and having fun. Even though one employee didn't know about the "Shoe" books, there's no indication that they are selling cheap material or using dirty business practices. As Tom Hanks said, "I sell cheap books. Sue me."

* Buy N Large from ''[[WALL-E]]'' is pretty much the end effect of this.

*** According to [[Word of God]], the Wall-E units suffered some sort of massive production failure, leaving only one active, which is why Buy N Large decided to give up on cleaning up the Earth.

* ''[[Batteries Not Included (film)|Batteries Not Included]]'' had a variation where a corp was trying to buy out the inhabitants of some tenement blocks so they could build a skyscraper in their place. The residents of one block resisted, and the corp started using dirtier and dirtier tactics to get rid of them.

* Mondo Burger from the old Nicktoons movie ''[[Good Burger]]''.

* ''Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices'', a [[Documentary]] [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|that]] attempts to prove that Walmart is this trope.

 

== Literature ==

* Early example: Ring's Come-one Come-all Up-to-date Stores from ''An International Affair'' by [[P. G. Wodehouse]]. Local, cosy "Ma and Pa" tea-shop depends on students of local boarding school. Along comes Evil Franchised Store, undercutting them something awful and fully intending to take advantage of the local yokels. Then some plucky students band together, have tea at the New Place, and secretly take something that makes them really sick, thus giving the New Place a reputation for food poisoning.

** And the owner is a manipulative bastard who plays on humans baser instincts.

* ''The Store'', a horror novel by [[Bentley Little]]. A large corporation places "The Store" in the protagonist's home town and [[It Got Worse|things go downhill from there]].

* In the ''[[Barry Trotter]]'' parody series, the Voldemort stand-in Lord Valumart fits this trope by selling magical goods to the Muddle world.

 

* In ''Lottery!'', a small mom and pop grocery store finds itself facing a major supermarket opening up across the street. They refuse to be bought out and they are about to be crushed, but the Intersweep Lottery rep comes to tell them they won over a million dollars. Armed with this sudden windfall, the family decides to fight fire with fire with the supermarket and enters a competition war is so fierce that the supermarket chain's owner investigates and he turns about to a friend of the small store family and a compromise is reached.

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* Mentioned in ''[[FoxTrot]]'':

'''Roger:''' I wondered why his teeth were chattering all the way through dinner. }}

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* Triple-AAA corporations in ''[[Shadowrun]]''

* In ''[[Mutant Chronicles]]'' just about every megacorp plans on doing what ever it takes to gain more grounds against the other megacorps. Their also not afraid to go on all out war with each other.

 

== Video Games ==

* Pizza Dinosaur from ''[[Wario Ware]]''; their [[Ear Worm|corporate song]] even says the 'lower quality products but cheaper' part.

'Cuz we've got six-thousand-stores-plus! }}

* Pizza Bat in ''[[No More Heroes]] 2: Desperate Struggle'', which has hurt the local fast food places like Burger Suplex.

* ''[[Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator]]'' has this as "Bean There, Done that".

* In ''[[Hyperdimension Neptunia]]'', there's a company called Avenir, a technology factory who owns a majority of the business on Lastation, and has used its influence to crush its competition and garner protection from Parliament, preventing Neptune and her friends from entering the Basilicom.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''Wondermark'' had a comic that subverted this where the one complaining about this trope pertaining to a bookstore was mostly peeved that the new store's security was not of the "old man in chair napping" model.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* Wal Mart Watch actually has a [[YouTube]] parody called ''[[Harry Potter and The Dark Lord Waldemart]]''.

 

== Western Animation ==

* Done twice in ''[[South Park]]''.

** Subverted in the episode for [[Bland-Name Product|Harbucks]] Coffee. Most of the episode involves a small coffee shop owner, Mr. Tweek, trying to keep Harbucks from imposing on his business, including forcing the four main characters to rally the town around him. Then it turns out that Harbucks actually does make better coffee than Tweek's when the townspeople finally get around to tasting it, and Mr. Tweek is even able to get a good job working there instead.

* Megalomart from ''[[King of the Hill]]''. Also Alamo Beer in a few episodes. However, after the Megalomart is blown up and rebuilt it stops being this.

* Superstore USA from ''[[Family Guy]]''.

* "Sprawl-Mart" is portrayed like this in the later episodes of ''[[The Simpsons]]''. Also, Ned Flanders has to compete against the left-handed giant "Left Mart".

* One of the [[Veggie Tales]] stories, based on ''Don Quixote'', had a little local restaurant that was very successful...until a giant corporate eatery, The Food Factory, moved in across the street.

 

== Real Life ==

* WalMart and other "big-box" stores are pretty much what inspired this trope, whether true or not. In fact, this page used to be called [[Volde Mart]], a portmanteau of WalMart's name with that of [[Harry Potter|Lord Voldemort]].

* Companies such as Monsanto have come under fire and have been seen as this by local farmers, due to neighbouring farms using seeds patented by such companies as these. Unfortunately, the patents are on ''self replicating'' products - meaning that if pollen from a patented plant blows over from a neighbouring plot into yours and starts producing a certain patented genotype or trait... ''they CAN sue you''. Even worse for "organic" farmers since they can not only be sued by Monsanto, but the unintentional hybridization with genetically modified crops renders their own crops non-"organic", driving them out of their niche market.

* Australian retail giants Wesfarmers and Woolworths seem to be taking their cues from WalMart, as [[Hungry Beast]] explains [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1et_HBmLYw here].

 

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