Walmart Stereotypes

On July 5th, 2017 Walmart Cooperation released a commercial advertising their pickup at store discount option. Walmart was founded in 1962 by Samuel Moore Walton and James Lawrence Walton. The cooperation operates under three segments: Walmart US, Walmart International, and Sam’s Club. The store caters to lower and middle-income families’ due to its inexpensive items and discounts. The commercial is still in commission and is accessible through any streaming or television network company. Saying this, the purpose of this particular commercial was to inform customers of Walmart’s pickup at store option that gives the buyer a discount on their item. Due to the fact that this commercial is available to anyone who watches television the audience

The first stereotype is the first woman that appears on the scene. She is standing at a playground, presumably watching her children play. She is there to reinforce the idea of woman being the primary caretaker of the children. The second stereotype present in the commercial is the ‘typical sports dad.’ This is shown, in Figure 2, when a man, whom the audience expects to be a father, is standing along the sidelines of a children’s soccer game. What further supports the stereotype for the ‘typical sports dad’ is that man is buying a television, which based on the context surrounding him, he will use to watch sports with. In the next scene, there is a couple, which consists of a man and a pregnant woman, are preparing for their child. The man is buying a car seat from the Walmart website. The stereotype that is present in this scene is that the man is the provider of the family. He is the one buying the item and in the next scene he is the one picking up the car seat up. To go along with this, the product associated with the man is a car seat which is going to be placed in a car and cars are usually associated as

Although the commercial does show diversity in race, it does help to break traditional views of same race couples and opposite sex couples. Overall, the commercial is very set on traditional gender roles meaning that woman are caretakers and men are the providers. To try to negate some stereotypes, the commercial could keep the same scenes for each actor, but change the items they are searching for. The woman at the restaurant could be buying a television and the man at the soccer game could be buying a vacuum. This would negate traditional gender roles. Instead of having a heterosexual, same race couple, the commercial could change the couple to a same sex couple or an interracial couple. In doing these things, the commercial would be breaking traditional stereotypes in