An evil large corporate retailer moves into a previously "unspoiled" area, and proceeds to try to drive all the pre-existing local "Mom & Pop" competition out of business, usually through a combination of price undercutting, bribery and other shady business practices. Frequently depicted as offering inferior products, but at much lower prices. Very frequently involves a CorruptCorporateExecutive. Sometimes even has some ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney to avoid being punished, or to survive losing customers. Our heroes must then band together in an effort to save their beloved coffee shop/video store/bookstore from certain extinction.

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

When considering whether an example would fit this trope or not, please keep in mind that simply having a large corporate entity in the story may not qualify it as a PredatoryBusiness. The intention of this trope is that the large corporation's aggressive business tactics and the opposition to the corporation should figure in a plot or subplot. For situations where the corporate entity is more of a environmental detail or a mood-setting device, MegaCorp or BlandNameProduct may be more appropriate.

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.

Not to be confused with WelcomeToEvilMart which is about companies and corporations that specifically cater to villains.

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!!Examples:

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[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* In ''IkokuMeiroNoCroisee'', the Galerie du Roy is threatened by the opening of a "Grande Magazine", or as it would be known now, a Department Store.
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[[folder:Film]]
* Fox Books in ''YouveGotMail''
** Possibly subverted: The small bookstore does go out of business, but Meg and Tom fall in love anyway, so it's all good?
** 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 ''WesternAnimation/{{WALL-E}}'' is pretty much the end effect of this.
** Also subverted in a weird way. Generally {{Predatory Business}}es are criticized for selling cheap, crappy merchandise, but the Axiom and nearly everything on it are incredibly well-built, given that all its systems are working with apparently no problems centuries after the ship was supposed to return to Earth.
*** According to WordOfGod, 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.
* ''Film/BatteriesNotIncluded'' 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 ''GoodBurger''.
* ''Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices'', a {{documentary}} [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin that]] attempts to prove that UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} is this trope.
* In Creator/MelBrooks' ''Film/SilentMovie'', the evil mega-studio "Engulf & Devour" (a play on Gulf+Western, who had recently bought Creator/{{Paramount}}) was determined to shut Mel Funn's tiny studio down, much like a melodrama villain trying to shut down an orphanage. The tagline at the end of the movie read "This is a true story."
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[[folder:Literature]]
* Early example: Ring's Come-one Come-all Up-to-date Stores from ''An International Affair'' by Creator/PGWodehouse. 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.
* Subverted in Emile Zola's ''Au Bonheur des Dames'', where the owner of the aggressively expanding corporation is the protagonist. It doesn't prevent Zola from pointing out (with impressive foresight) how such stores tend to drive their less competitive neighbours out of business.
** And the owner is a manipulative bastard who plays on humans baser instincts.
* ''The Store'', a horror novel by BentleyLittle. A large corporation places "The Store" in the protagonist's home town and things go downhill from there.
* Speedy Mart, from the Kitty Norvil series by Carrie Vaughn. The owner of the chain creates natural disasters with magic. Kitty's bounty hunter friend that tried to kill her once saves the day, with help from a century old ghost. It makes sense in context.
** The stores themselves appear to be clean if a draw for paranormal activity. It's just that the chain exists not to do business but to cover the movements of and provide (what are effectively) "arms caches" to a very high priced contract killer. It's left unspecified whether the chain is subsidized by the proceeds of criminal activity (which would indeed let it unfairly compete).
* In the ''BarryTrotter'' parody series, the Voldemort stand-in Lord Valumart fits this trope by selling magical goods to the Muddle world.
* In ''Discworld/ReaperMan'', [[DeathTakesAHoliday Death is fired]] and one consequence of there being too much life force in the world as a result is that it starts making metaphors literal. One such metaphor is the idea that big corporate shopping malls are parasitic predators that suck the life out of inner city shops, with a living mall coming into existence as a result.
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[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* 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.
* This trope was examined on the "Wal-Mart" episode of ''Series/PennAndTellerBullshit''. Penn argues that Wal-Mart's growth is the natural end result of capitalism, and that demonizing Wal-Mart is unfair.
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[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* Mentioned in ''FoxTrot'':
-->'''Andy:''' I wish that Starbucks hadn't opened up.\\
'''Roger:''' Why? You think it'll hurt the Mom & Pop coffeeshops?\\
'''Andy:''' Because it's on the route Peter takes to come home.\\
'''Roger:''' I wondered why his teeth were chattering all the way through dinner.
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[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* Triple-AAA corporations in ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}''
* In ''MutantChronicles'' 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.
* One of the [[FairFolk True Fae]] in the TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost book ''Grim Fears'' is trying to take over the Earth by heading a megacorp of big box stores.
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[[folder:Video Games]]
* Pizza Dinosaur from ''VideoGame/WarioWare''; their [[EarWorm corporate song]] even says the 'lower quality products but cheaper' part.
-->We represent Pizza Dinosaur
-->We've got the most stores in the world
-->Our crust is tough and our sauce is thin
-->But we're everywhere so you gotta give in!
-->Mona Pizza's got nothin' on us
-->'Cuz we've got six-thousand-stores-plus!
* In ''{{Persona 4}}'', Junes is ''regarded'' as one, though it's more a parody of {{Mega Corp}}s. Its poor reputation (though people still shop there even while blaming it for driving small shops out of business, similar to people in Walmart in real life) has several long-reaching effects; the most obvious is on party member Yosuke, who happens to be the son of the manager.
* Pizza Bat in ''NoMoreHeroes 2: Desperate Struggle'', which has hurt the local fast food places like Burger Suplex.
* ''BenJordanParanormalInvestigator'' has this as "Bean There, Done that".
* If your income drops too low in VideoGame/SimCity 3000, you may be propositioned to build a Gigamall in your city. By doing so, you'll earn a steady income which can keep you in the black, but like all the business deal buildings, [[DealWithTheDevil there's a catch]]: The Gigamall torpedoes the development of your own commercial sector.
* In ''VideoGame/HyperdimensionNeptunia'', 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.
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[[folder: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.
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[[folder:Web Original]]
* Wal Mart Watch actually has a Website/YouTube parody called ''HarryPotterAndTheDarkLordWaldemart''.
* The JibJab video [[http://sendables.jibjab.com/originals/big_box_mart "Big Box Mart"]].
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[[folder:Western Animation]]
* Done twice in ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark''.
** While Wall Mart ''is'' [[spoiler: the physical shell of an EldritchAbomination]], the boys make the argument that if the citizens of South Park really don't want it to succeed over the local "mom & pop" stores... ''stop shopping there''. This is [[{{Pun}} reflected]] by the core of the Wall Mart being a mirror, so the boys (who were told to destroy the core) see themselves in it. [[SpoofAesop So then they just break the mirror which causes the Wall Mart to collapse into itself.]]
** Subverted in the episode for [[BlandNameProduct 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.
* ''[[{{Sixteen}} 6teen]]'' had Tajma-home-video, doing essentially this to smaller video stores.
* Megalomart from ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill''. Also Alamo Beer in a few episodes. However, after the Megalomart is blown up and rebuilt it stops being this.
* Superstore USA from ''FamilyGuy''.
* Red Rocket (a front for COBRA, of course) from the original ''GIJoe''.
** Cobra Industries in ''GIJoeRenegades'' is ''made'' of this, although their pies ''are'' better than homemade. Their bagel-dogs aren't bad either.
* The monstromarket featured in the ''GarfieldAndFriends'' short "Supermarket Mania".
* "Sprawl-Mart" is portrayed like this in the later episodes of ''TheSimpsons''. Also, Ned Flanders has to compete against the left-handed giant "Left Mart".
** One episode had a gag where Homer was visiting Flanders' store and made a comment about all the Starbucks in the mall. Upon leaving, ''every store except Flanders''' has been replaced by a Starbucks.
** In an earlier episode, Bart goes to a mall to get his ear pierced, passing several Starbucks stores, and a place with a sign saying "Coming Soon - A Starbucks". On entering the piercing store, he is informed that it is becoming a Starbucks in five minutes. Five minutes later, Bart leaves with a pierced ear and a Starbucks cup.
* One of the WesternAnimation/VeggieTales 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.
** Then later in the episode, [[spoiler: this is [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] when it's revealed that The Food Factory doesn't open until lunch so the small local restaurant just has to change its menu to feature breakfast staples.]]
* The Quicker Stop from the pilot of ''ClerksTheAnimatedSeries''.
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[[folder: 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 VoldeMart, a portmanteau of [=WalMart=]'s name with that of [[HarryPotter Lord Voldemort]].
* In England and Europe this is basically taken as a fact, supermarkets in the [=UK=] have been caught demanding that farmers give them their crops basically for free and the ''entire'' milk industry runs at a loss because they don't get even a fraction of what supermarkets sell their products for. This kind of thing has led to recent events such as [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20508075 European police being hosed with milk by angry dairy farmers]]. [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20521906 Here is a video]].
* Car and tire companies were accused of this in the early 20th century, mostly due to the demise of the electric urban streetcars. Fear of people not buying their products basically encouraged one of the earliest examples of PredatoryBusiness. They would buy urban streetcar companies, then liquidate them to eliminate the competition. Fines for such were proposed... but they were able to get them all down to a ''dollar''. ''Each''. (Part PredatoryBusiness, part ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney.) [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal]]
* 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]].
* [[http://www.cracked.com/article_15967_the-awful-truth-behind-5-items-probably-your-grocery-list.html Here is a list]] of examples from recent history, presented by Cracked.
* Several of [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232207/ Michael]] [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098213/ Moore's]] films deal with this phenomenon in the United States
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