What is more important to the average consumer? Low prices or morality? Walmart has proven for some time that low prices are the driving force in successful sales to its consumers. According to David Kiley in his article Walmart should decide what kind of company it wants to be, "Walmart rose to riches based on a certain set of business principles: relentlessly cut costs, torture vendors into submission, locate stores where a Walmart will draw customers from several downtowns, and keep store employees "down on the farm" as much as possible when it comes to pay and benefits."
Others agree that Walmart is forcing other markets to lower their prices as well. As Hendrick Smith explains, "the big box retailers, epitomized by Wal-Mart, have been driving a massive restructuring of production worldwide; moving jobs from the U.S. and Europe to Asia. They do it by setting price points and forcing suppliers to meet their targets. Only lowest-cost labor can meet their targets, and that means producing in Asia."
Now Walmart is stuck in a position where it has to constantly defend itself to its consumers as well as the market to weaken the negative buzz. Sounds like a job for Super PR. WalMart hired Andrew Young, the former mayor of Atlanta and lieutenant for Martin Luther King Jr., to help with its PR; unfortunately it didn't quite work out that way.
Walmart hired Young in hopes that he would help deflect negative attention the corporation was facing from minority communities and urban markets.
One little problem
Soon after Young was hired, he said this: "Those small shops are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. ... They've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs. Very few black folks own these stores."
Looks like Walmart just can't win. Oh well, good luck anyways.
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