How Wal-Mart Penetrates the Market

As to getting the attention and the interest of the customers the Independent Television Service also wrote that critics of the Wal-Mart believe that they kept on opening stores to saturate the marketplace and to get way with competitors leaving the Americans sitting empty as they soon close their stores. What the Fast Company. com wrote about how Wal-Mart allures their customers of bringing to them quality and affordable goods is most revealing: “Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers.

At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. ” (Fast Company. com) . According to Fast Company. com Wal-Mart has the “power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. ” This leaves the manufactures no choice but to lay off employees in order to cope up and to survive Wal-Mart’s business scheme.

How they handle their employees As the biggest provider of jobs Wal-Mart is expected to have provided better working condition and benefits to their thousands and thousands of employees. However, readings have shown that Wal-Mart is criticized not only by individuals but of different communities, labor organizations and human rights movements for low income, lack of benefits, and strong resistance for the employees to organize themselves to reach collective bargaining agreement and to protect themselves against the summary dismissal, harassments, and other unjust labor practices.

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In an article of Forbes magazine cited by Independent Television Service it states: “Employees on average take home pay of under $250 a week. The salary for full-time employees (called "associates") is $6 to $7. 50 an hour for 28-40 hours a week, which is typical in the discount retail industry. This pay scale places employees with families below the poverty line, with the majority of employees' children qualifying for free lunch at school. ” There are many court cases filed against unfair labor practices.

In an article of New York Times in 2005 which the Wake-up Wal-Mart quoted it says that many workers in China filed a class suit. Below is an excerpt of the article that tells of the inhuman activities of the company. “China filed a class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart in September 2005 claiming that they were not paid the legal minimum wage, not permitted to take holidays off and were forced to work overtime. They said their employer had withheld the first three months of all workers' pay, almost making them indentured servants because the company refused to pay the money if they quit.

” (New York Times, September 14, 2005 as cited by Wake-up Wal-Mart) To some extent, the Wal-Mart management in respond to the clamor of their employees, made a policy on the change of schedule of workers. However, it was taken as a cost cutting measure because it also cuts the pay of the employees. Below is a paragraph extracted from the article from Wal-Mart Watch: “Unions have criticized Wal-Mart for its scheduling changes, saying the company is forcing people to be available to work more hours each week but to sacrifice a more regular schedule.

” Some even said that the scheduling system that the company has device brought devastating implications for the employees. Blank as cited by Wal-Mart Watch states: “What the computer is trying to optimize is the most number of part-time and least number of full-time workers at the lowest labor costs, with no regard for the effect that it has on workers’ lives. ” How do people perceive Wal-Mart Critics have made a lot of negative comments about the business practices of Wal-Mart. It is accompany that could not even provide its employees decent pay.

It is anti-union and there are even comments of employees being threatened or harassed. There is a fast turnover of employees which is explained by Independent Television Services to be attributed to inadequacy of pay. Fishman in the article he wrote in Wal-Mart What Don’t Know states” that real story of Wal-Mart is the story of pressure the biggest retailer relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us "every day low prices. " It's the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U. S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole.

That story can be found floating in a gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart. ” Wal-Mart’s Impact to the US Economy On the bases of the readings and data gathered, it is sad to note then that the biggest chains of stores that have the capacity to provide millions of jobs for the American people ironically is also the company that has exploited and has turned the American economy in to a deeper crisis. With Wal-Mart relying on import goods such as the products of China, there is not much hope for the American manufacturer to be able to maximize their chances of earning better profit.

Unless Wal-Mart reviews its commitment to the American people and start taking conscience and heart on the plight of its employees the American society will remain victim of a hard core profit oriented scheming Wal-Mart. What some people said when interviewed by Independent Television Services is really something to be alarmed of: "Wal-Mart is more powerful than any retailer has ever been. " It is, in fact, so big and so furtively powerful as to have become an entirely different order of corporate being. Fisherman (2006) in his book also wrote:

“The Wal-Mart effect touches the lives of literally every American every day. Wal-Mart reshapes the economic life of the towns and cities where it opens stores; it also reshapes the economic life of the United States — a single company that steadily, silently, purposefully moves the largest economy in history. Wal-Mart has become the most powerful, most influential company in the world. ” The American people indeed must do something if only to save the American economy into a bigger disaster.

Work Cited

1. Coop-America. Wal-Mart.Responsible Shopper. October 3, 2008. http://www. coopamerica. org/programs/responsibleshopper/company. cfm? id=306 Fast Company. com.
2. Wal-Mart you don’t know. October 2, 2008. http://www. fastcompany. com/magazine/77/walmart. html
3. Fishman, Charles. The Wal-Mart Effect. 2006. http://www. walmarteffectbook. com/thebook. html
4. Geewax, Marilyn. 2006. Shopping, politics blend as Wal-Mart fight foes. Wal-Mart Workers Association. http://www. walmartwork. org/index. php? id=85&tx_ttnews [tt_news]= 312&tx_ttnews[backPid]=28&cHash=78bfe1b61d

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