Always Low Prices, Always: Marketing Origins Of Wal-Mart's Dubious Csr Performance.
ABSTRACT
Wal-Mart, the world largest and most successful corporation, also has the unflattering reputation of being so uncaring that it now symbolizes corporate social irresponsibility in the eyes of many Americans. How did the most powerful company become admired as well as feared and despised? Using the company's marketing strategy as a basis for analysis, the current study argues that Wal-Mart's problems with its own employees are not just perceptual but fundamentally due to the company's targeting and positioning choice: the delivery of always low prices to customers has meant that such stakeholder groups as employees have had to be squeezed.
1. INTRODUCTION
From its humble beginnings in the 1960's Wal-Mart has emerged as not just the most powerful global retailer of all times, but also the world largest company, with annual sales of more than 250 billion. In a short time Wal-Mart has become the largest and the most successful retailer, by a fanatical pursuit of the lowest prices for its customers. Along the way, however, the company has acquired the unsavory reputation of ruthlessness with its supply chain, competitors and employees alike. Few companies have achieved the mixed reputation of being admired, beloved, for their business success and yet despised and feared at the same time for their labor and competitive practices as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is the company people love to hate; with intense emotion. More "anti" websites are devoted to Wal-Mart than to any other company. The company is dissected and studied for its marketing triumphs as much as it is for its labor relations failures.
Many studies document Wal-Mart success and ascend to global power (cite). An even larger number discuss its rise from folk hero to corporate monster (cite). The current article examines the origins of Wal-Mart's CSR performance shortcomings, from a marketing perspective. How did a company heralded as a hero as recently as in 2000 become a...
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