Walmart knows you don’t like them, and they’re making ads in response. From ABC News: “Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will run national television ads starting Monday praising its record as an employer and corporate citizen, taking its arguments straight to the public in an ongoing battle over its reputation with unions and other critics.”
“It all began with a big dream in a small town, Sam Walton’s dream,” a narrator says as one ad starts with a black-and-white photo of Sam Walton and a grainy shot of Walton’s first five-and-dime store in what is now the chain’s headquarters town of Bentonville, Ark.
“Sam’s dream. Your neighborhood Wal-Mart,” the ad ends.”
A tear, really. —MEGHANN MARCO
Wal-Mart Will Defend Reputation in Ads [ABC News]
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Oh, and I’ve been working 12 hour days recently, 7 days a week on some massive deadlines. I’m not entirely certain how coherent my arguments are. For that I apologize.
blugus -
You still don’t seem to get that Wal-Mart forcing down prices also forces down quality. The great brands that Wal-Mart sell no longer produce the high-quality merchandise that made them famous.
Sorry about the long days, though. Exhaustion sucks.
Rex -
I’m probably not the bourgeois person you’re thinking of, but it wouldn’t surprise me if you thought I was. I live in a working class neighborhood in an urban area and rely on public transportation and my feet to get around. I don’t go to Wal-Mart because I don’t need to or want to spend the energy on 5 different buses to get there. It’s not a “you’re low class if you shop there” thing, it’s a “I don’t need it” thing. I doubt I’m alone. I’d rather patronize the stores my neighbors own and operate and put my money directly into the local economy. I don’t shop at Target even though there are a few of those nearby. I don’t like Ikea any better, though they get points from me for putting multiracial, same-sex partner families in their commercials.
BlueGus – the reason your kids are wearing those clothes are so fast is because they come from WalMart. That’s creating the problem, not solving it. If you’ll read that Snapper story, it’ll do a better job that we can explain here, but in WalMart’s efforts to sell name brand items for cheap, they convince these manufacturers to create a “WalMart” line, essentially, which is crappier stuff but with that almighty name attached to it. The basic gist of the Snapper story is that they wanted Snapper to develop a crappy line as well so they could get the cost on their high-quality mowers down, so that you can throw it away every fall (and create quite the acculumation of trash in the county dump, I suppose).
I think people here get caught up in so many different arguments, it’s hard to come to one conclusion. It’s not about Nazi shirts, or the class of people that shop at Walmart it’s about a company (albeit successful) using shady, unethical business practices to get what they want (a cheaper product). I understand bluegus in his rationalization that cheaper=better, but sometimes it’s not all about me. I’m willing to pay an extra 2cents on my dorritos to know that some of that money is staying in my community.
See, that’s how the economy here works, the money stays here. Walmart is buying goods from over seas, paying wokers there pennies a day (not sure the Chinese gov’t cares too much about labor practices) and forcing their wholesalers to sell the products to Walmart for less. The only people here that are making any money are the Waltons.
Put it this way, its cheaper for me to throw my trash out the window of my car right? 90% of the time no one would notice, but I don’t because I feel obligated (by being a US citizen) to care about our country, no matter what the issue, even if it’s bigger than I can hope to affect. (sorry bad metaphor) I just wish people would think of the big picture instead of me me me all the time.
Best quote I heard about WalMart was that they are “retail strip mining” communitities. That is taking more than they are giving back…
Bluegus,
Trusting a company that encourages you to steal from them in the vicinity of $20-$25 without legal recourse makes people neither:
A. Want to shop somewhere that propogates criminal activity.
B. Feel that products which are mostly accessible through theft in anyway to be of “quality products at prices far cheaper than anyone else”.
If the proprietor’s of such a company take it upon themselves to amalgamate such heinous acts and theories into their already shady practices, why wouldn’t anyone understand “the backlash against Wal-Mart”?