What about Walmart's reputation, or rather its patrons? When ever I read, hear or see something about it, I perceive it as an allegory of white trash, uneducated, overweight America. Maybe I could be wrong, but these views are always connected with Walmart.
This reputation is mostly because Walmart is the only big-box retailer with significant locations in rural and small town America. Walmart's competiters like Target tend to be much more concentrated in urban or suburban areas.
Despite the perception that Target is "higher end" than Walmart, Walmart's financials are in much better position and I imagine that they will outlast Target by decades. Target's problem is that they attempt to compete for higher-end "suburban" shoppers in areas where that demographic has ample boutique or specialty retail options. Walmart's philosophy is to basically be the only game in town for the millions of rural Americans in the South and Midwest.
I don't think Target being "higher-end" than Wal-Mart is perception necessarily. The issue is that middle-market retail is struggling, but low-end retail is doing well, generally, across the board. It's not just Wal-Mart - sellers of true crap like Dollar Tree/Family Dollar and Dollar General are also flourishing. Target suffers because it's trying to focus on middle-income buyers more than low-income buyers, but middle-income is a tough market these days.
I actually don't think I've been inside a Wal-Mart, or at least not more than once or twice in my life. There is no Wal-Mart in NYC even today, I don't think (or if one has opened in the past few years, it's not transit-accessible).
