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Countless businesses and industries have adapted the UPC bar code to their needs, using it to aid in inventory records and the identification of products at the checkout stand. None has used the technology as efficiently as Wal-Mart, however. As former Wal-Mart store manager Jon Lehman explains, through the bar code Wal-Mart is able to "track sales on specific items specific weeks, specific days, specific hours of the day, when [they] sell merchandise the most."
Through this knowledge the company has managed to change its relationship with manufacturers and suppliers. It has, according to Lehman, "completely changed the communication process between Wal-Mart and its manufacturers … It really took it from sort of an archaic or old-build way of just maybe communicating with a vendor every 52 weeks out of the year to communicating every day, every hour, every minute," he says. According to Professor Bonacich, this created a power shift from the manufacturer to the retailer, because Wal-Mart "knows what is being sold … [and] what prices are popular, so they are able to say, 'We want to sell this at a certain price. You make it at a certain price, or we're not going to work with you.' "
