The big chain stores, both online and your traditional brick and mortar, seem every year, to take more and more market share from independent shop owners and other stores that aren't able to successfully compete with them. From a pure competitive standpoint, the competition isn't even fair to begin with, for behemoths such as Wal-Mart, for instance, are often able to negotiate special terms with city and country officials, to forgo property tax payments for years upon years, along with the subsidy or easement of road access and so on and so forth. This means, that what it costs for a Wal-Mart to create, build, and operate their store is typically far cheaper than those that are in the same marketplace and wish to compete against them, for not only does your Wal-Mart reap the tax benefits, but also because of their sheer size they are typically able to get the best deals from vendors, who are often not even based within America, so that when Wal-Mart advertises that they are selling at "everyday low prices" they are pretty much telling the truth about the pricing, but not bothering to tell the truth about how they got to that pricing.
The thing about shopping at Wal-Mart, is that your money that is spent purchasing what appears to be cheaper goods, sits in the Wal-Mart cash register for a moment, before the bulk of that money goes out and on to regional headquarters and well beyond, whereas if your money was spent locally at an independent store or a regional division of an independent store chain that was essentially local within the community at large, than your dollars would mainly stay within that community and would re-circulate within that same community. Sure, no doubt, Wal-Mart pays wages to their local workers as well as contributing somewhat to the employment of some transportation in regards to goods that arrive at their given facility, but local stores do the same and more, because they bank within the community, their corporate offices are local to the community, and thereby for the most part the dollars spent shopping at their establishment, stay within that community.
Of course, for many families, money is rather tight, as well as they want to make the best decisions in the expenditure of that money, but often there are establishments, such as restaurants, entertainment venues, convenience stores, and various department stores, that are competitive against the big box players, on a like for like basis, that would definitely appreciate your business as well as keep that money flowing within the community. Logically, money spent at local establishments helps to keep your neighbors employed as well as being better for the local infrastructure that is necessary for every community in order to function well and to grow.
Every time that you spend your money, you are voting with that money, and if that money is spent without forethought on mega corporations and the like, this money has in essence been siphoned away from your community, which primarily benefits those that are to a certain extent, exploiting or extracting your monetary resources to satiate their own. When, on the other hand, you spend your money on local establishments, you are directly and indirectly helping your community, by contributing to the velocity of the money that resides within that community, in which, the more that is locally spent and re-spent, keeps people employed and helps a community to stay strong and vibrant.
It isn't so much that Wal-Mart or any of the big box corporations are evil, it has more to do with the fact that Wal-Mart's corporate overseers primarily see your community as something to profit upon in a manner in which they benefit more than your community benefits from having them there.