Wal-Mart Case Study

Question 1: What were the rights of Walmart, the employer, during these two organizing drives?

Wal-Mart had been criticized for its record in employee relations. Wal-Mart had no unions, despite

The company uses foreign labor, including child workers, and sweatshops. This creates a hard life for those who are forced to meet Walmart’s needs. The company has been accused of paying officials in foreign companies in order to keep many details silent. But, we cannot know if those allegations are

The Dollar General is an American wholesale company that was first initiated in Scottsville, Tennessee by Turner and Cal Turner. Its headquarters are located in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. The mission statement of the Dollar General is "Serving Others." This mission statement helps to bring out the innate requests and intentions of the company in the United States of America and other countries in the world. The company has a vision that describes how it manages to cater for four different types of people. These four groups of people include the customers, the community, employees, and shareholders. Within these categories of people, Dollar General aspires to serve others through deliver of price quality and terrific prices for customers, opportunity, and respect for employees, a superior return for shareholders and a better life for the communities.

Wal-Mart’s sheer size gives it unrestrained economic power which allows it to drive down costs in the retail and manufacturing sectors and to enact its own standards with regards to its work force.

In this paper, I have researched to find out how this grant empire has become and remain so successful. I found out that one of the reasons is because it has been able to maintain the goals and standards that its owner, Mr. Sam Walton has built it upon. Even after his death, Wal-Mart continues to expand and grow in other countries. Wal-Mart is considered one of the top ten global companies today. Mr. Walton’s main goal was to sell products at a low price so that people could live a better life. Another reason is because Wal-Mart uses certain market mix strategies such as the four P”. These strategies, price, promotion, product and place.

In an effort to keep low prices for its customers, Wal-Mart kept its labor cost low (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2009). There has been a constant battle between Wal-Mart and its employees, who wanted to create a union. The purpose of the union was to ensure that employees, who were members of the union, would receive a wage that was competitive to others in the workforce. Stanwick and Stanwick (2009) stated, “In 2002 a comparison of wages for unionized workers and Wal-Mart employees showed that unionized Kroger employees would get four to five dollars an hour more than the Wal-Mart employees” (pgs. 415-416). It was discovered that Wal-Mart would discourage employees from forming unions, by firing those that promoted it (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2009). Of the contrary, the Wal-Marts in China were allowed to have unions, as they received pressure from the All-China Federation of Trade Unions which is belived to be apart of Chinese Communist Government (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2009).

Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) were introduced in 1980 with the purpose of saving energy. They initially were very expensive and consumers were aware of many flaws that made them hesitant to purchase the bulbs and bring them into their homes. The positive effects of switching from alternative bulbs to CFLs were overshadowed by media attention highlighting the issues that remained unresolved. Wal-Mart pushed promotional programs in 2007 that were very successful. They introduced a private label at a lower price, offered online ordering, posititioned the products well, installed interactive displays and engaged with new partners to promote energy efficiency. In 2009 the CFLs were redesigned and

U.S. Immigration agents raided over sixty stores in 2003 for alleged use of illegal aliens to clean the stores. The janitorial staff was subcontracted by Walmart, however, it was alleged they had knowledge in the subcontractors use of illegal immigrant labor. Walmart settled by paying an $11MM fine in 2005.

A. Wal-Mart realized through third party studies and internal research that the Chinese customer were significantly more cost-sensitive than those in other countries and that there existed a strong, established culture of frequently shopping around to find the absolute lowest prices. Through these studies, Wal-Mart also realized that customer satisfaction level greatly influenced customer loyalty in China. The greatest determinant of this satisfaction was made up of perceived value. The perceived value is composed of three sub factors: (1) Product price, (2) Relative price and (3) Promotion. The other factors for customer satisfaction in descending order of its importance are Image,

Wal-Mart is a company which operates in the service sector, more specifically in the “Discount, Variety Stores/Retail” industry. The company’s superior performance is demonstrated through the fact that it was America’s largest company (in terms of revenue) in 2002, and the reputation of the company is reflected in the opinion of “Fortune” who have identified Wal-Mart as one of the world’s most admired companies. In 2004 Wal-Mart had been hiring 1.4 million employees – making it the largest corporation in the world. Wal-Mart’s share prices have also been stable at time of stock market volatility. There are

We would like to show our gratitude to Resp. Prof. Mr. Sham Sharma, for providing us with the golden opportunity to prepare an intellectual report, on Distribution & Logistics Management of “wal-mart”.

An example is when there is an underperforming store; top managers visit these stores in order to lend their expertise to the employees there. Moreover, they fly on monthly basis to various Wal-Mart stores locations to check their

Human Resources bear another competitive advantage of Wal-Mart. The retailer is eager to employ only people that agree totally with the philosophy of Wal-Mart and put all their effort to achieve the most possible success for their company. Furthermore, it is common to recruit graduates directly after education. The advantage of the company is the ability to influence the working behavior of the employees. In order to motivate the employees, they were involved into actively suggesting improvements in day to day operations, resulting in cost savings of 85 million US-$ in 1993. Additionally, it is possible for the employees to participate in shareholding and to obtain dividends of Wal-Marts profits. Looking at the top of the company, it is not important, which position every single management member takes in the

1. What is the ethical dilemma facing Wal-Mart in this case ? Do Wal-Mart’s associates also face an ethical dilemma? If so, what is it ?