Wal-Mart Company, Research Paper Example

Wal-Mart Company has been a focus of criticism from a wide array of groups, organizations, its clients and labor unions with regard to its policies as well as business practices. They have also expressed concern over sourcing of foreign products, using public subsidies, security policies, environmental practices, and the way they treat their suppliers. The company however attributes their low prices to high levels of efficiency in the company.  Wal-Mart is a company with an ambition of making profits and this is achieved through offering small wages to the employees so that they can be able to offer low prices of their products to the customers (Bianco & Zellner, 2003).

The employees of the company are so many to the extent that they are entitled to low wages and limited coverage of healthcare services. This raises important issues concerning its social intentions and social reputation. Although Wal-Mart has successfully prevailed in the market, the opinion of most people is that the success has been achieved at the expense of other small companies that can hardly offer sufficient competition as a result of the extremely low prices offered by Wal-Mart (Keil & Spector, 2005).

In view of the company’s social conscience, the company sponsors some charities, offers help to communities and the employees also give assistance to the community. This is thus an indicator of positive as well as negative reputation that is associated with Wal-Mart (Roy & Sandra, 1997).  The company has been able to create substantial value, part of which is channeled to the clients through offering low prices of their products. The general and acceptable situation in the market is that the commodities of Wal-Mart are significantly cheaper relative to the products of the competitors.

References

Bianco, A & Zellner, W., (2003). “Is Walmart Too Powerful?” Business Week. 2003.

Keil, S.R. & Spector, L. C. (2005). The Impact of Walmart on Income & Unemployment. Review of Regional Studies, Vol. 35 Issue 3, p336-355, 20p.

Roy, V. S. & Sandra, S. V., (1997). Wal-Mart: A History of Sam Walton’s Retail Phenomenon. Twayne Pub.