The Main Street Merchant of Doom
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Case 1 Analysis: Walmart: The Main Street Merchant of Doom
Walmart was first founded by Sam Walton in 1962. Mr. Walton wanted to provide the “average” American people with quality goods that they could afford at low prices. Sam took the expertise that he took from working at JCPenney and applied it to his new company.
Not soon after opening their first store, Walmart began to develop a loyal customer base. Along with this loyal customer base came expansion within the company across the United States. However, since Walmart became so popular, other stores such as Sears, Target, and small mom and pop shops began to close their doors because they couldnt compete with Walmarts extremely low prices.
With selling goods for such low prices, Walmart began to face opposition. Other towns that did not want the big chain store to enter their town and hurt their stores began to bring lawsuits against Walmart to stop them. The process would take a while when all was said and done, but it usually ended up with a victory for the small town.
Through its Walmart Foundation, Walmart promotes its support of education, military, hunger relief, disaster relief and giving programs. However, despite all of these great things that Walmart does, there are some ethical issues that are apparent in this case. The company has been accused of paying wages so low that their employees cant live off of them, they make employees work off the clock, they pay little to no benefits, and they take advantage of immigrant workers. Also, they had a class-action lawsuit on gender discrimination against women brought against them.
In conclusion, I believe that Walmart is a decent store overall. I do not like how they treat their customers personally, especially after reading this article. I did not know that they treated men and women differently, which shouldnt be the case, especially the times that we live in. Walmart should change the way they do business with their employees, and they should help them out more since the company makes so much money as a whole.