Wal Mart Options

[sixfive]

Wal-Mart is often seen as a microcosm of the globalization process. Using its enormous retailing power it has been able to provide an array of consumer goods at rock bottom prices. However, it has also been widely criticized for paying low wages, a lack of adequate benefits, and driving small retailers out of business. So too, Globalization has been praised for lifting millions of people from poverty in China and India, but denounced for failing to improve the lot of most of the world’s poor, undermining living standards in developed countries as industries have migrated overseas to exploit low wage labor, and for unleashing industrial developments that have damaged the global environment. Do you believe that the impact of WalMart and the larger process of Globalization has been largely positive or negative?

[mifff]

Wal-Mart is good in the sense that it provides for a lot of middle-class families, arguably at the price of driving out smaller businesses. Honestly the only thing that bothers me is the whole mass cheapo product thing. Stronger businesses don't always mean better products, and I would rather pay a little more for quality.. I'd just have to prioritize what I can sacrifice being crappy and cheap (like toilet cleaner) and what can't be (clothes.. truthfully :X) for it to work within my financial situation. If Wal-Mart keeps stamping out small businesses in their effort to settle on mass-pleasing brands, where will the diversity come from? Innovation is born out of diversity.. Those businesses won't even get a chance to really develop their product. In some cases, the depletion of those businesses can mean erosion of a culture or art like soap-making. Competition between companies = happiness for everyone


As for globalization, idk.

[medic]

Wal-Mart is good in the sense that it provides for a lot of middle-class families, arguably at the price of driving out smaller businesses. Honestly the only thing that bothers me is the whole mass cheapo product thing. Stronger businesses don't always mean better products, and I would rather pay a little more for quality.. I'd just have to prioritize what I can sacrifice being crappy and cheap (like toilet cleaner) and what can't be (clothes.. truthfully :X) for it to work within my financial situation. If Wal-Mart keeps stamping out small businesses in their effort to settle on mass-pleasing brands, where will the diversity come from? Innovation is born out of diversity.. Those businesses won't even get a chance to really develop their product. In some cases, the depletion of those businesses can mean erosion of a culture or art like soap-making. Competition between companies = happiness for everyone
As for globalization, idk.

Wal-Mart doesn't produce products, even the Sam Choice brand is just another company that has the Sams Choice logo on it. Wal-Mart is a distributaing retailer, they sell other people products. Developing products isn't in their blood.

Also it's kind of hard to use the unemployment argument. A average super Wal-Mart employees 300+ employees. So, they are really creating jobs. Most small businesses that would be effected by the opening of a Wal-Mart have a small employment base to start off with. They will still be out of a job, but the unemploymeyed people being hired at the Wal-Mart store in most cases outweighs the ones going to loose their jobs.

There really isn't much small businesses can do. If Wal-Mart has their minds set for a retail store, they will get it. They will sue until they get the land and they will fight until the death if they don't get it. In one case in the US, a county has kept a super Wal-Mart from building.

I also love when people are still using home values as a reason for not building a Wal-Mart, houses today aren't worth anything to begin with, and even if they were, NO ONE is going to buy it.

When I hear a small business complain about a new Wal-Mart I laugh, because they too wanted to be like Wal-Mart, they wanted to be nation wide, they wanted to be world wide. They wanted everything Wal-Mart has, but can't compete.

Also, the average small business doesn't know how to manage money correctly or how to compete with Wal-Mart. It's possible to do, I have seen it done. You have to know your business market, and you have to be better than Wal-Mart in every other place then price. It's not that hard, Wal-Mart sucks in a lot of other places. Customer Service is a perfect example of that.