“Save money. Live better.” This a slogan that we all know. There isn’t a single person in American who doesn’t know what Walmart is. People seem to wonder if walmartization is a good thing or a bad thing. What do you think? Is it helping our economy and society or hurting them? What exactly is “walmartization”? How is it addressing social issues and what problems is it causing? Walmart was founded by Sam Walton, in 1962, in Rogers, Arkansas. Sam had two small retail businesses before opening up Walmart and was looking for another way to bring a greater opportunity and value to his customers. The opening of Walmart created what we now call walmartization. This is when a large chain store moves into a region and devastates local businesses …show more content…
These businesses could compete with the lower prices, mass production of products, and better pay that Walmart offered. Lower prices and better pay are still consequences of today. People blame walmartization for the “disappearance” of the middle class. Because of their “low prices” people walk in with a list and walk out with a cart full of stuff not on their list. This causes them to spend more money even though they are “saving money” by shopping at Walmart. “Walmart has received a lot of attention for supposedly raising wages, but the truth is that Walmart pays its new, entry-level U.S. workers $9/hour. New workers who complete a training program will move up to $10/hour. This program, called Pathways, takes at least six months to complete and workers say that they’ve been told they would be fired if they don’t finish the program within 18 months. Due to the high turnovers Walmart expects 500,000 people to go through Pathways in 2016. Yet, as of September 2016, only 3,100 workers had completed the program, with another 2,500 in the final stages. That means that, with the year almost over, less than 1% of expected participants had successfully completed the program necessary to receive Walmart’s widely publicized raise to $10/hour.” (changewalmart.org,
In order to gain the success it has had, Wal-Mart has no doubt affected small businesses. But in the place of small business Wal-Mart has been able to do far more for Americans than small businesses could. It provides consumers inexpensive necessities for life, it provides work for those who would otherwise have none, and it has a stake in the global economy that benefits our own with trading. Wal_mart
Walmart is bad for America, as some say. The Globalization essay that was handed out in class had many good points. It states that Walmart puts many smaller businesses out of service. A recent study by David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and two associates at the Public Policy Institute of California, "The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets," uses sophisticated statistical analysis to estimate the effects on jobs and wages as Wal-Mart spread out from its original center in Arkansas. The authors find that retail employmen...
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).
When Wal-Mart establishes itself in a town, it makes its competitors to close their businesses since they cannot compete in the current market. There are several businesses that go out of business when this company sets up a branch in the town. However people don’t agree with this since customers are the ones who go to purchase goods from Wal-Mart. If there are people who should be blamed are the customers since they flock into the retail market to buy from them. This is the reason why these retail businesses are out of business. The reason that makes customers go to shop at Wal-Mart is that, there is ample parking, low prices and they also provide superior goods and services to the customers.Down town destruction started earlier before Wal-Mart was established. Wal-Mart is trying to bring with it new technologies that are aimed to cope with the current technologies. We ought to find new ways of doing things and this is exactly what is happening with Wal-Mart. For instance, Wal-Mart might be embracing technology to supplant it. Internet shopping might be some of the new business technologies that they are trying to embrace.
The quality jobs that come with a Wal-Mart store provide employment and income to the members of the local community. A small retailer is most likely a family run business offering only a few jobs with little upward growth for those employees. In comparison, a single Wal-Mart store may offer around five hundred jobs. While most of the jobs are low wage jobs, Wal-Mart is not much different that other retailers (De Coster and Edmonds 632). However, those jobs at Wal-Mart come with competitive wages and comparable benefit packages to other ret...
Wal-Mart was conceived and founded by Sam Walton in 1962, at Rogers, Arkansas. Sam Walton started with just a few small variety stores, funded with borrowed money. His goal was to provide affordable products to the public to make life easier. After his success with the first few stores, Sam Walton borrowed more money to build more stores, creating the Wal-Mart empire as we see it today. The retail giant proves its stoic presence in our lives with its $401 billion sales for fiscal year 2009.
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
Wal-Mart initially began its operations in 1945, when Sam Walton leased a ‘Ben Franklin’ franchise variety store in Newport, Arkansas. After relocating to Rogers, Arkansas in the early 1950s, Sam Walton’s ‘Ben Franklin’ became ‘Walton’s 5 & 10’. By 1962, Walton found himself the chain owner of 11 different Walton’s stores across Arkansas. He then decided to rename the chain ‘Wal-Mart’, after himself. On October 31, 1969, after further expansion across the state, the chain was incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Three years later, Wal-Mart was approved and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
With Wal-Mart being so outrageously huge in this short of time, I believe that it has not yet settled into their customers why Wal-Mart is so cheap. Wal-Mart will replace higher wage jobs with lower wage jobs and require taxpayer assistance to keep Wal-Mart employees out of poverty. Numerous studies reveal that, contrary to the company's PR, Wal-Mart does not create new jobs when it comes to town. Wal-Mart simply replaces higher paying retail jobs with lower paying ones and, due to its adverse impact upon local businesses, may actually cause a net decrease in job numbers. The factories in China supply their employees with a whopping three dollar...
Although there are many masterminds behind the large corporate companies in America, Sam Walton’s Walmart has had a quite large impact on the U.S economy. Walmart began with a man that had a dream in Rogers, Arkansas. Walmart has continued to grow since it was first created, and will keep growing with the future generations of economists. Little did Walton know when he opened that small store in 1962, that is would be such a success in today’s world. Samuel Moore Walton was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma on March 29, 1918.
It’s a place everyone knows, much like the post office or even city hall. Wal-Mart. That is where the oddity lies, in the fact that a retail store is just as well known as staples for towns across the nation; not to mention the fact that Wal-Mart isn’t just in the United States, but around the world. Founder of the billion dollar industry, Sam Walton, did expect success from his endeavor, but no one could have foreseen just how influential the retail store would be. Wal-Mart is an astonishingly successful business with humble beginnings, but may have a rocky road ahead in terms of social issues due to the treatment of employees and it's strong effects on the economy.
The fact is that Walmart pays its employees a minimum of nine dollars per hour, which is more than the federal minimum wage at seven dollars at seven dollars and twenty-five cents per hour. Additionally, Walmart does provide their employees with basic health benefits. Still, critics demand that Walmart pay their employees more and provide more health benefits, but rising costs would result in higher prices which would result in less purchasing power. That is not good for the economy. What critics fail to comprehend is that a job at Walmart earning minimum wage is not a full-time job but a part-time job, as employees should be going to college or looking for other higher paying jobs. Overall, it’s the same exact situation as the “Mom and Pop” farce and every other complaint, like price discrimination and predatory pricing; Walmart is following a business model that gives consumers the goods and services they crave at affordable prices and a low cost for Walmart. Walmart’s practices are ethical, legal, profitable, and exemplify the principal of the free market system, so any American that claims that Walmart should be targeted for its practices are virtually asking the government to target the foundation of the American economic system. In addition, those same people are asking for
From this, it is clear that not everyone is a fan of the company. But where are this perspective coming from? It is just as likely for them to be from a biased outlet as the information they’re presenting being false. However, these perspectives can be easily counteracted by opposing ideas. One of which being the author stating the so-called “investing over $2.7 billion in wages” plan. Which I can confirm is true. In addition, since this plan was introduced in 2015, it has had a positive impact on the companies sales both in stores and online. The 200 training centers opened in 2015 as mentioned by the author, was a positive implementation in order to increase the minimum hourly rate. Before of which, had been a common complaint and issue associated with the company. Not only this, but there were endless complaints made about the company’s employee treatment, but it seems as though Walmart has acknowledged these complaints and in recent times has taken a step in the right direction. The author had not addressed much factual information regarding its suppliers and rather the “goals”
The first Wal-Mart store opened in July of 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas by Sam Walton who believed that the future of retailing was in discounting and to avoid competing with established giants like Sears and Woolworth, Wal-Mart’s stated out of the large cities in the beginning and this strategy help avoid competition, while in rural areas Wal-Mart began growing their customer base by offering ways to save money and shorter travel distance, Sam Walton felt the best way to make customers happy was to provide the low prices every day (Farhoomand, 2006). The company needed to continually find ways to control the operating costs so the savings would then be passed on to Wal-Mart customers in the form of lower prices than the competitors. Walton was opposed to having any kind of employee unions for its company and saw them as a disruption and an inconvenience (Farhoomand, 2006). The continued search for lower prices made him aware of business related travel cost, Wal-Mart executives stayed in low cost hotels when they traveled and the cost related to the services provided by suppliers, Wal-Mart helped suppliers improve operations and efficiency to produce lower cost. Walton wanted the suppliers to correct any nonessential or insufficiencies existing in their business structures as a way of gaining lower prices and higher value products for its Wal-Mart stores. To further push savings Wal-Mart forced cost down by eliminating the middleman and buying directly from the manufacturers. This cost saving also applied to executive salaries Walton felt providing employees with stock options, training opportunities, and allow employees to grow and develop would be a better way to engage and involve them in his vision (Farhoomand, 2006).
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...