The Dark side of Walmart
“Save money, live better,” The slogan that stays long in any Walmart visiting customer’s mind, mostly because it is true to an extent. Walmart is outrageously famous for selling large variety of products at low prices. This asset has made Walmart the go to store for any and all because who balks at low prices? Surely not the common middle class or even poor american consumer who has to buy all the necessary products and whose weekly grocery bill needs to be in an affordable budget range. What’s more is that Walmart also saves time for the average customer by offering wide variety of products so all the shopping can be done in one trip to only one store. While all these are profitable and useful upsides to Walmart, …show more content…
For years, Walmart has set low employment wages to cut costs despite rampant criticisms from economist and lobbying of unions, but just in 2015 due to falling sells for five straight quarters, it decided to raise employee wages and experienced in early 2016, increased customer service ratings of 75% and rising sales (Irwin, 2016). Though this amount of goodwill is much appreciated after the years of unfair pay wages, Walmart still has yet to improve the working conditions of its overseas workers. The Chinese workers in Walmart have started wide protest movement with outreach of 400 stores and 20,000 employees, about one fifth of its Chinese workforce, in recent months; They are complaining about low wages and a new scheduling system that consists no overtime pay and overly long shifts has left them “poorer and exhausted (Hernandez, 2016).” Walmart has also been notoriously infamous for “Predatory Pricing,” to drive out competition, it’s tactic of below the cost pricing to drive out competition that has been used in various U.S. states and foreign countries, including Wisconsin, where they had to settle out a lawsuit that for selling basic items such as milk, butter, cigarettes, and laundry detergent, making its competitors suffer large sales losses; this same tactic was used in Oklahoma’ Sam …show more content…
Walmart does a very poor job of satisfying its stakeholders, with unions, employees, and even the general communities getting negatively affected, also they have shown no hesitation towards breaking of laws when necessary. The benefits for their various practices are obvious; more profit, Having little competition, and succeeding in the global growth of business while satisfying consumers with a promise of low prices. Technically speaking, Walmart is not a sustainable enterprise in various ways, considering how often it takes shortcuts for faster profits at the harm to society and the economy. Though it has maintained its position as global and domestic retailer, its loss is that as the wide protests in china are getting ground from employees, the same could happen in various other countries where they have set up business, leading the governments to build barriers and laws that would inevitably hurt Walmart 's globalization. They have not only lost money while selling items below the cost at times to drive out competition, According to Norman (2008), that can be seen through the case of Sam 's club in Oklahoma, where they lost $250,000 to $300,000 on gas sales at three stores while using below cost tactic; They have threw hundreds of
“Save money, live better,” The slogan that stays long in any Walmart visiting customer’s mind, mostly because it is true to an extent. Walmart is outrageously famous for selling large variety of products at low prices. This asset has made Walmart the go to store for any and all because who balks at low prices? Surely not the common middle class or even poor american consumer who has to buy all the necessary products and whose weekly grocery bill needs to be in an affordable budget range. What’s more is that Walmart also saves time for the average customer by offering wide variety of products so all the shopping can be done in one trip to only one store. While all these are profitable and useful upsides to Walmart, …show more content…
For years, Walmart has set low employment wages to cut costs despite rampant criticisms from economist and lobbying of unions, but just in 2015 due to falling sells for five straight quarters, it decided to raise employee wages and experienced in early 2016, increased customer service ratings of 75% and rising sales (Irwin, 2016). Though this amount of goodwill is much appreciated after the years of unfair pay wages, Walmart still has yet to improve the working conditions of its overseas workers. The Chinese workers in Walmart have started wide protest movement with outreach of 400 stores and 20,000 employees, about one fifth of its Chinese workforce, in recent months; They are complaining about low wages and a new scheduling system that consists no overtime pay and overly long shifts has left them “poorer and exhausted (Hernandez, 2016).” Walmart has also been notoriously infamous for “Predatory Pricing,” to drive out competition, it’s tactic of below the cost pricing to drive out competition that has been used in various U.S. states and foreign countries, including Wisconsin, where they had to settle out a lawsuit that for selling basic items such as milk, butter, cigarettes, and laundry detergent, making its competitors suffer large sales losses; this same tactic was used in Oklahoma’ Sam …show more content…
Walmart does a very poor job of satisfying its stakeholders, with unions, employees, and even the general communities getting negatively affected, also they have shown no hesitation towards breaking of laws when necessary. The benefits for their various practices are obvious; more profit, Having little competition, and succeeding in the global growth of business while satisfying consumers with a promise of low prices. Technically speaking, Walmart is not a sustainable enterprise in various ways, considering how often it takes shortcuts for faster profits at the harm to society and the economy. Though it has maintained its position as global and domestic retailer, its loss is that as the wide protests in china are getting ground from employees, the same could happen in various other countries where they have set up business, leading the governments to build barriers and laws that would inevitably hurt Walmart 's globalization. They have not only lost money while selling items below the cost at times to drive out competition, According to Norman (2008), that can be seen through the case of Sam 's club in Oklahoma, where they lost $250,000 to $300,000 on gas sales at three stores while using below cost tactic; They have threw hundreds of