Wal-Mart Is the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, a Monopsyny? Monopsony arises when a firm captures the ability to dictate price to its suppliers, because the suppliers have no real choice other than to deal with that buyer. One in every five retail sales in America is recorded at Wal-Mart's cash registers. The firm's revenue nearly equals that of the next six retailers combined. Wal-Mart has faced several accusations of, "predatory pricing", or intentionally selling a product below cost in order to drive some or all competitors out of the market. Wal-Mart accounts for upward of 30 percent of U.S. sales, and plans to more than double its sales within the next five years. Wal-Mart decided that it did not approve of the artificial sweetener Coca-Cola planned to use in a new line of diet colas. In a response that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, Coca-Cola yielded to the will of an outside firm and designed a second product to meet Wal-Mart's decree. Wal-Mart recently decided to allow each individual pharmacist in the company to choose whether or not to stock the "morning after" pill. Wal-Mart's constant demand for lower prices caused Kraft Foods to "shut down thirty-nine plants, to let go of 13,500 workers, and to eliminate a quarter of its products." Wal-Mart's product selection is a controversial subject, and is often right leaning. Examples of items that Wal-Mart does not sell are certain men's magazines such as Maxim and albums marked with RIAA's Parental Advisory Label. Critics point out apparent hypocrisy in that Wal-Mart sells other controversial items such as rifles and shotguns, R-rated movies, and violent video games. In 2005, Wal-Mart rejected the original cover of Willie Nelson's reggae album, Countryman, which featured marijuana leaves, in an apparent pro-marijuana statement. To satisfy Wal-Mart, the record label, Lost Highway, issued the album with an alternate cover, without recalling the original cover. Wal-Mart has created 240,000 jobs over the last three years alone. A global insights study says that Wal-Mart saves the average American household more than 2,300 dollars a year. In 2005, Wal-Mart generated more than $13.9 billion in state and local sales taxes and paid millions in property taxes. Work Cited 1."Criticism of Wal-Mart." Wikipedia. 25 Oct. 2006. Wikipedia. 2 Nov. 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_Wal-Mart. 2. Lynn, Barry. "The Case for Breaking up Wal-Mart." Harper's Magazine. 25 July 2006. 3 Nov. 2006 http://www.alternet.org/workplace/39251/. 3. Bartlett, Bruce. "A Distorted Lens on Wal-Mart." Washington Times. 24 Dec. 2004. 3 Nov. 2006 http://www.washtimes.com/commentary "Through the history most politicians and economists accepted that freedom within the marketplace had to be limited, at least to some degree, by rules designed to ensure general economic and social outcomes.
I don't see Wal-Mart as a huge retailer trying to take over the world with cheap prices. I see Wal-Mart as business that has played their cards the way they were dealt. Our economy is poor right now; banks are hurting because people a...
Within an excerpt from, “The United States of Wal-Mart,” John Dicker explains that Wal-Mart is a troubling corporation. Dicker begins his article by discussing why the store is so popular within the news in an age of global terrorism, coming to the conclusion that Wal-Mart has a huge scope in the United States and that it has more scandals, lawsuits, and stories than any other supercenter. Continually, he goes on to explain that Wal-Mart outsources jobs and their companies demands makes it hard for employees to have livable wages and good working conditions. Furthermore, Dicker addresses the claim that Wal-Mart provides good jobs, by destroying this perception with statistics showing how employees live in poverty and that their union scene
"Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the world's largest retailer, with $285.2 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2005. The company employs 1.6 million associates worldwide through more than 3,700 facilities in the United States and more than 2,400 units in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. More than 138 million customers per week visit Wal-Mart stores worldwide." (Walmartfacts.com)
Wal-Mart has been praised for providing cheap diverse products close to home, while providing hundreds of jobs. The leading discount retail store got its title by selling its items at a lower cost than other competing stores. Whereas competing grocery store Winn Dixie sells a steak for twenty dollars, Wal-Mart sells it for seventeen dollars. This price difference may not seem like much, but when Wal-Mart’s overall prices average differs from Winn Dixie’s by a few dollars, it begins to add up. Wal-Mart has allowed for low income families to buy products for a reasonable price. Along with its low prices, Wal-Mart has been known to sell wide variety of products. While some stores such as Winn Dixie, Kroger, and Publix only sell food items, Wal-Mart sells food items along with electronics, clothes, and toys.
Few companies create as much controversy as Wal-Mart has done with its approach to maintaining high profits with low costs. Individuals either love or hate Wal-Mart. There are consumers who like the low prices and convenience of shopping at Wal-Mart. Supporters of Wal-Mart also laud the fact that the company creates multiple jobs for not just the individuals who are employed within the stores but also those who create the products that are sold in the stores. Critics of Wal-Mart have issues with the treatment of those individuals who work at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has a poor track record when it comes to Fair Labor Practices by giving low wages, bad healthcare coverage, and treats employees. Low wages, no benefits, irregular schedules, and unreliable hours are just some of the horrible working conditions most Walmart workers have to endure.
Wal-Mart represents the sickness of capitalism at its almost fully evolved state. As Jim Hightower said, "Why single out Wal-Mart? Because it's a hog. Despite the homespun image it cultivates in its ads, it operates with an arrogance and avarice that would make Enron blush and John D. Rockefeller envious. It's the world's biggest retail corporation and America's largest private employer; Sam Robson Walton, a member of the ruling family, is one of the richest people on earth. Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way: by roughing people up. Their low, low prices are the product of two ruthless commandments: Extract the last penny possible from human toil and squeeze the last dime from its thousands of suppliers, who are left with no profit margin unless they adopt the Wal-Mart model of using nonunion labor and shipping production to low-wage hellholes abroad." (The Nation, March 4th 2002 www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020304&s=hightower).
Wal-Mart is one of the largest companies in the first 10 of Fortune 500. It based its growth on supplying the needs of people of all works of life at an extremely low price.
Some people raise a concern about employment practices with Wal-Mart. There are definitely two sides to this argument. Wal-Mart has been sued recently for allegedly making employees work overtime, off the clock, in order save money in payroll expenses. There has also been concern of the amount of money that Wal-Mart pays employees. Many employees have complained of being paid only minimum wage for extended periods of time. On the other hand, Wal-Mart has created thousands of jobs in small communities when stores open up. This has helped many communities that struggle with high unemployment rates. Another thing that Wal-Mart has done is allow anyone displaced by hurricane Katrina to be placed in a job at any other Wal-Mart in the country. One other questionable employment practice that has been brought up by employees is discrimination. Wal-Mart has been the plaintiff in many discrimination law suits in recent years, claiming that Wal-Mart discriminates in many ways against women and minorities. I guess the employment practices of Wal-Mart could be looked at as favorable or unfavorable depending on how you look at it. However, one has to wonder if Wal-Mart creates programs like the hurricane Katrina program just in order to create positive publicity.
Wal-Mart has branded stores in all 50 states and in over 27 countries. Wal-Mart started with humble roots in 1962 by Sam Walton in the small town of Bentonville, Arkansas. Within thirty years, the small local discount retailer grew to one of the largest retail companies in the United States of America. Now it stands as the largest retailer in the world. As the largest retailer, Wal-Mart has gained many detractors. In "The Case for Wal-Mart," Karen De Coster and Brad Edmonds recognize how people “like to attack bigness” (632). Many believe Wal-Mart offers low wage jobs with few employee benefits, discriminates against women, and among many other issues, doesn’t give back to the community (631). In contrast to the constant barrage negative attacks, Wal-Mart proves beneficial to the community. Wal-Mart prides itself on being an equal opportunity employer to such a degree it has the most diverse group of employees anyone can imagine. Most Wal-Mart stores are the anchor that provides a steady stream of consumers to other much small businesses in the area. Beyond providing quality jobs for the people in and around the store, Wal-Mart brings convenience, lower prices, and help to those in need.
While Walmart gives jobs to Americans all over the world, Walmart also takes them overseas to China where labor is cheaper. In order to keep their prices low for their customers, Walmart demands that corporations keep their prices or they will drop the company’s products. When the price resin increased in the mid 1990’s, Rubbermaid was unable to keep production costs down, so they increased the price of their products. This lead to Walmart dropping their products for a few years and Rubbermaid selling their American production factory and moving to China. Which caused them to become
Today Wal-mart has a higher GDP than the entire country of Switzerland, but don’t worry they’re pretty neutral about it. But there has also been news about how they treat there employees. In 2004 an article was released entitled Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart, and soon after Washington got involved. The bad publicity took a toll on Wal-mart and in fact is still today, Maryland passed a law in January, 2006, that said larger employers, such as Wal-mart, must spend at least 8% of their payroll on health benefits for their employees, and now many other states have followed suit. The bad publicity also made it so 8% of customers shop elsewhere because of what they’ve heard, this has caused lower expected sales around the holidays during 2004, and 2005. Some things they’ve done is in 2006 they paid employees on average 9.36 dollars, while other major retailers like Target and Sears pay on average 11.08 dollars. While this can be easily denied by Wal-mart, another way they have gained bad publicity is from something called off-the-clock work. If they had not finished their job they had to clock out and then still finish their job, meaning they wouldn’t get paid for
Consumer Protection is governed by the Political trend. What does politics have to do with Walmart. In the case of Consumer Protections, it has everything to do. Walmart has seen its share of consumer protection class action suits because of its lack of protection where the consumer is concerned. Walmart however aspires to help make choices easier and more transparent for its customers. According to the U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission,
Many employees claim low wages, no benefits, irregular schedules, and unreliable hours as some of the horrible working conditions they have to endure. Walmart employees put together different unions all the time to try and protest or strike about the wages, treatment and anything else that seems to come along with being an employee of Walmart. Walmart does not take well to these unions. Women of Walmart seem to have it the hardest though. As recently as 2013, despite the fact that women account for as much as 57 percent of Walmart’s U.S. workforce, women were paid $1.16 less per hour (Osterndorf). In an article about Walmart and how it treats employees wanting to take sick days, a woman in fear of losing her job at a North Huntingdon Walmart, went back to work even though she had doctors' notes and hospitalization recorded, which were both rejected by her supervisors, to excuse her from work due to a miscarriage. She was worried the she would get fired due to absences so she went back (Abrams). Walmart also does not give out good health care to its employees. There are many claims of Walmart cutting health care for employees or finding the cheapest possible solution for an employee's health care. In 2014, the company cut insurance benefits to its part-time employees (Osterndorf). In a New York Times article about health care called, Walmart to End Health Coverage for 30,000 Part-Time Workers, it stated
Walmart has had a long-standing presence in America society since the middle of the 20th century, seen as a place to get everything done, Walmart has become a fixation in our society. From grocery shopping, to changing your oil and even filing your annual tax returns, Walmart is always there, everyday. Started by Sam Walton in 1962, it began as a small operation catering to a small Arkansas community. It was started on principles very similar to small local businesses in small towns. Today Walmart has gotten a different, darker reputation. On the surface, Walmart may seem like the solution to everyday issues. Low-income families are attracted to the low prices, and people who work odd hours benefit greatly from the 24 hours a day that many Walmarts are open. Lately, Walmart has also managed to be publicly recognized as a store that sells many of today’s green products, including organic food, environmental conscious cleaning products, as well as, paper products made from recycled paper. However, underneath all this, Walmart has a different side. Exploitation of its workers is widespread amongst Walmarts who do not belong to a union, especially in the United States. Wal...
Today Wal-Mart servers around 130 Million people world wide and it has employees over 1.3 million people across the globe. They have been increase in growth of sales over 11% which amounted $6.4 billion US dollars. The earnings of the Wal-Mart are far ahead of its French competitors Carrefour although it is having its branches in 32 countries it earning and saving far behind. With wide range of suppliers the Wal-Mart has it has been one of the successful retail chains in the world today.