Walmart is a multinational retail company that has hypermarkets, discount departmental stores, and grocery stores. The store is the world’s largest company in terms of revenue and offers its products at low prices.
If you love shopping at the one-stop shop, then head to Walmart’s chain of stores and enjoy all you’re shopping in a single trip.
There are controversies about whether the retail corporation has a positive or negative influence on society. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of the store.
Pros:
1. Low prices: Walmart sells products at lower prices than other retailers. Shopping in the store will save you a lot of money. This chain of stores is known for the low prices of products and other retailers can’t compete with them.
2. Diverse business model: Walmart has extended its operation to other countries offering the investors diverse business models. Opening branches to other countries lead to the growth of the business and expose investors to more wealth.
3. A wide variety of products: there is a wide variety of products you can choose from in the chain of stores ranging from food products, electronics, groceries, car repairs, and clothes among many things in a single trip.
4. Economy: Walmart boasts the economy of America and enables low-income earners to be able to afford items that would otherwise be expensive for them. Price deductions provide a lot of benefits to American citizens.
5. Great entertainment: There are many departments and you can walk through the big store viewing different items in the store.
6. Employment opportunities: Walmart is the biggest private employer in the US and has contributed significantly to the economy of the country. There are more jobs created for American citizens.
7. Job security: Employees are assured of their job in the stores. No matter how tough the economy is, consumers will always shop for items.
8. Reduce poverty rate: Since 1990, Walmart has reduced the poverty level by two-thirds. It has lifted more than one billion people out of poverty. The chain of stores is a great force to reckon with.
9. Additional businesses: A Walmart store build in a certain location attracts more businesses to be started in the area. People from the surrounding area will travel to do shopping within that area.
10. Wealth distribution: Walmart distributes wealth between the rich countries and the poor. Workers with no skills can take a job in the Walmart factory. This helps them boost their standards of living.
Cons:
1. Low wages: Walmart pays workers low wages and most of the time they focus on hiring part-time workers in order to cut down on total wages paid.
2. Anti-employee policies: Walmart does not support their employees’ and most of the time they’re mistreated. The employees’ purpose is to fit into the philosophy and the corporation is only concerned about itself.
3. Illegal citizens and racism: There is a lot of racism and gender discrimination in the stores. In 2003, the Corporation was in the headlines for hiring illegal citizens to do the cleaning after opening hours.
4. Micromanagement: There is a lot of micromanagement of workers in the store and rules are not properly enforced and have too many exceptions.
5. Health coverage: The Corporation doesn’t pay health insurance for the employees and it pushes them to get government-funded programs like Medicaid and public housing instead of paying for them.
6. Work schedules: Your days off are always split and sometimes you may find you’re only scheduled to work for only four hours a day. This may sometimes be hard to plan for your personal life.
7. Goal imbalances: The senior management are required to meet the compliance goals over the best-qualified individual and this may make the managers result in inappropriate techniques in order to demonstrate compliance.
8. Un-environmentally friendly operations: The Corporation was fined for violating water quality laws and regulations in one of its construction sites. The company was forced to create an environmental management plan which is worth billions in order to improve its compliance with laws in every state.
9. Market differentiation: The stores that operate on what works for one region should work for another region. These techniques cannot work for all regions.
10. No participation in decision making: Employees don’t contribute their ideas and opinion towards the growth of the chain of stores. They receive orders on how to run the stores.
