Selling and Buying Emotion, Essay Example

The use of emotional labour in the service sector involves a great deal more than providing friendly customer service.  Instead, it involves the subsuming of one’s own personal emotions in favor of the homogenized, corporate-approved personality that renders the individual as  unrecognizable from their fellow employees.  Walmart, the largest private employer and the richest company in the world (IAMAW, 2011), has worked hard to create a corporate image that suggests fiscal and social responsibility.  Its employees are encouraged to present a positive and happy face to all customers so as to encourage a high level of spending and repeat business.  Indeed, the welcoming mask of the Walmart greeters are as much a part of their uniform as the familiar blue vest with its smiley face logo and caption reading “our people make the difference” (Walmart, 2011).  The homespun mythos of Walmart first spun by company founder and chairman Sam Walton is as much a false face as the ubiquitous smile on the corporate logo.  Although the narrative of the Walmart brand is one in which country and family are of primary supremacy, the reality is a punitive corporation which stands for the destruction of locally-owned businesses through the use of an exploited workforce unable to afford health insurance and forbidden from unionizing (Beirau & Greenwald, 2005).

Walmart’s corporate website advises potential employees that the difference between customers and staff is minimal as everyone is part of the same “family” (Walmart, 2011) looking to find or provide quality merchandise at low prices.  The site states that “when you arrive at a Walmart store, you are welcomed by a friendly associate and asked if you need help. When you arrive to work at a Walmart store, you get the same sort of welcome. We are here to help you begin this new chapter in your career and help you feel at home” (Walmart, 2011).  The connotation of this statement is that, like a family, Walmart has the best interests of its employees and customers at heart.  This attitude is designed to engender loyalty from its employee base and, indeed, the family model is perhaps apt when one considers the manner in which employees, like children, are dependent on their corporate father for sustenance, guidance, and support.  Dr. Marsden writes that “emotions often reflect one’s central, salient, and valued identity” (Unit 3, 2011).  However, under brand-Walmart, an employee’s personal identity is subsumed to the corporate persona of  the smiling, productive, and efficient service worker.  Much as factory workers became divorced from their own physical bodies, the emotions of Walmart employees become the instrument of the company, a way for the corporation to claim ownership over the “aspect of self” (Hochschild, 2003, p. 7) that makes their employees individuals with desires separate from that of the company.

The work performed by the greeters, cashiers, and other ‘associates’, to use Walmart’s preferred lingo, certainly meets Hochschild’s three characteristics of emotional labour.  The majority of the chain’s service workers come into contact with customers, this contact is meant to “produce an emotional state in another person” (Hochschild, 2003, p.147).  This is understood to be a positive state such as contentment or happiness that would help to facilitate the customer’s shopping experience.  As the Walmart recruitment website states, “as a Walmart store associate, your job is about much more than selling products–it’s about helping people everywhere live better” (Walmart, 2011).  This “important mission” (Walmart, 2011) involves participating in training and development programs, thus tying this profession into the third characteristic of emotional labour discussed by Hochschild wherein the “employer, through training and supervision, [is able] to exercise a degree of control over the emotional activities of employees” (2003, p. 147).  Thus, a job at Walmart is about more than unpacking boxes, ringing through purchases, or helping customers to find the products they need.  It is about “keeping millions of customers happy” (Walmart, 2011), no mean feat in an age when many people are unable to find their own happiness, let alone assist virtual strangers in discovering happiness through the purchase of deeply discounted clothing, household goods, and food.

This is not to suggest that emotional labour cannot have its positive components.  A large part of any retail experience, indeed, any social experience, involves civility, respect, and kindness.  As Hochschild points out, emotional labour allows for the expression of courtesy and is not inherently bad (2003).  However, problems arise when emotional labour is expended without any sort of system of give-and-take from the employer, something that a wage alone cannot account for.  As Doctor Marsden writes, “we internally assemble the emotional gifts that we give, but we expect something in return. Each emotional gift is part of a system of reciprocity, and because of this, these emotional exchanges are finely calculated” (Unit 3, 2011).  This system of emotional exchange could involve an employer providing employees with adequate health benefits, financial bonuses for work well done, and opportunities for advancement.  Such is not the case with Walmart; although both their corporate website and Sam Walton’s autobiography detail the lengths this massive employer has gone to in order to ensure the happiness of its employees, anecdotal evidence found in less biased circles would suggest otherwise.  The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a federation of labor movements, compiled a variety of first-person reports from both present and former Walmart employees.  Overwhelmingly, they write of unsafe and unfriendly working conditions, a lack of job stability and health insurance options, and the constant feeling of being replaceable and therefore unworthy as an employee.  As one former employee wrote under the condition of anonymity,

The image of Walmart is we’re family-oriented, we’re community-oriented, we care. But they don’t care enough to make sure their workers have health insurance. What’s more caring than that, to make sure your workers can go to the doctor if they need to?  Walmart makes billions, and it’s on the backs of workers who end up with nothing. (AFL-CIO, 2011)

This unbalanced, hierarchical, and largely dysfunctional relationship between Walmart employees and employers is a recipe for dissatisfaction, poor job performance, and high employee turnover.  However, current economic conditions in the United States ensure that positions at Walmart, despite the negative elements, remain in high demand.  Thus, the dilemma of the Walmart employee can again be compared to that of a child reliant on an unkind or abusive parent for guidance, direction, and the necessities of life.

The true emotional state of mind of these employees in irrelevant in their quest to meet corporate expectations and maintain steady employment.  Any anger, resentment, or frustration they feel at their employers or customers must be suppressed, replaced instead with their own version of the Walmart smiley face that represents the corporate-approved mask meant to convey all that Walmart represents about family values and low prices while hiding its less savoury elements through the employees’ abilities to engage in surface acting (Hochschild, 2003).

The emotional labour of Walmart employees is directly connected to the corporation’s ability to engage in emotional branding.  The public persona worn by these employees contributes to the Walmart brand by playing a role in the corporate narrative.  This storyline was first created by company founder Sam Walton, who played up his own folksy, small-town persona even while his company was one of the wealthiest in the world.  In the introduction to his 1992 autobiography, Sam Walton:  Made in America, he presents his corporation’s origin story as one as American as mom and apple pie, trumpeting his bootstraps philosophy while he extols his own sense of corporate responsibility.  “I realize we have been through something amazing here at Walmart,” he writes, something special that we ought to share more of with all the folks who’ve been so loyal to our stores and to our company.  That’s one thing we never did much of while we were building Walmart, talk about ourselves or do a whole lot of bragging outside the Walmart family–except when we had to convince some banker or some Wall Street financier that we intended to amount to something someday, that we were worth taking a chance on. (Walton, 1992, p. xi)

In less than a paragraph he creates an us-versus-them mentality in which simple, small town consumers are aligned with the humble Walton and his company in opposition to the cynical big city types who are incapable of trusting a man with a dream.  What Walton fails to mention is that this picture of small town idealism is at odds with the reality of Walmart’s growth as a corporation; in reality, the majority of goods sold in Walmart stores are not made in America but produced in Third World countries at a deep discount, thus allowing Walmart to undercut its competition, essentially driving many non-chain retailers out of business (Beirau & Greenwald, 2005).

The unreality of Walton’s narrative typifies the storytelling that goes into the emotional branding of a corporation or product.  And, certainly, Walmart is not a glamourous, high fashion brand meant to evoke the ideals of urban areas and hip twenty-something consumers.  Instead, the corporation goes after an often-neglected market of people who are not particularly wealthy or trendsetting, people who, like Walton, may “drive an old pickup truck with cages in the back for [their] bird dogs, wear a Walmart ball cap, or get [their] hair cut a at the barbershop just off the town square” (1992, p. 2).  These are the people with whom Walmart attempts to forge a meaningful relationship–blue collar, hard working families with bills to pay and budgets to stretch.  In essence, the typical Walmart consumer is not so dissimilar from the typical Walmart employee.  And, ironically, Walmart creates customers through its employees by engaging in business practices that include paying female employees less than their male counterparts, refusing to pay overtime, and defining full-time work as twenty-eight hours a week (IAMAW, 2011).  This creates a legion of underpaid, undervalued workers who are left without the means to shop anywhere but the company store.

The last decade has brought changes to Walmart’s corporate story:  in reaction to bad press regarding their legendary union busting practices, which included permanently shutting down stores in which employees had attempted to form unions (IAMAW, 2011), and a class action lawsuit regarding gender inequality in their hiring policies, Walmart has re-crafted itself as a sensitive corporation in tune with the needs of its consumers.  In both its advertising campaigns and corporate website, the emphasis continues to be on the financial savings available by shopping at their stores.  However, the corporation now also presents itself as deeply committed to the communities in which its stores are located, involving itself in health, agriculture, and educational programs (Walmart, 2011).  This is not to say that individual Walmart employees, or indeed the corporation as a whole, does not care about children, communities, and the environment, only that the specific crafting of its emotional brand is a reflection of the corporation’s awareness that “public opinion, affect, and sentiment” (Arvidsson, 2005, p. 236) are of central concern to its fiscal health.

The emotional branding of Walmart has, indeed, very little to do with the actual goods that can be purchased in its stores.  Instead, it attempts to make a connection with both actual and potential consumers in order to demonstrate what the brand has to offer to improve not only the bargains stocked in the consumer’s pantry, but their relationships with their children, spouses, communities, and country.  To shop at Walmart is to enter a world as familiar as any idealized small town, a place where friendly associates greet you like a long lost relative and bend over backwards to assist in your enjoyment of the Walmart experience.

Walmart seeks “to create an emotional relationship and become intimate with you.  They want to win your trust, know your emotional needs and desires, and ‘romance’ you.  They want you to fall in love with their brands” (Marsden, Unit 4, 2011).  Through the creation of this long-term relationship, Walmart effectively ensures the continued loyalty of both consumer and employee by building on the myth that both shopping and working at Walmart allows individuals to become better parents, better citizens, and better human beings.  The inherent conflict of Walmart exists in its approach to its employees and customers wherein employees are expected to create a welcoming environment that supports the  brand and encourages loyalty amongst its customers while its own corporate practices fail to support the needs of the very same employees who are just as often customers as well.

References

AFL-CIO. (2011). Walmart workers speak out. American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations. Retrieved from http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/walmart/walmart_2_profiles.cfm

Arvidsson, A. (2005). Brands: A critical perspective. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5 (235). doi:10.1177/1469540505053093.

Beirau, B.M. (Producer)., & Greenwald, R. (Director). (2005). Walmart: The high cost of low price. [Motion Picture]. United States: Brave New Films.

Hochschild, A.R. (2003). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

IAMAW. (2011). Just the facts. International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Retrieved from http://www.iamaw.ca/campaigns/walmart/facts_e.html

Marsden. (2011). Unit 3: Selling emotions (emotional labor). The Business of Emotions Study Guide.

Marsden. (2011). Unit 4: Buying emotions (emotional branding). The Business of Emotions Study Guide.

Walmart Corporation. (2011). Walmart corporate. Retrieved from http://walmartstores.com/

Walton, S. (1992). Sam Walton: Made in America. New York, NY: Doubleday.