Wal-Mart: Global Success and Domestic Controversy

Wal-Mart is an international phenomenon. The store guarantees low prices for living better, despite the controversy about what Wal-Mart is really like. Americans perceive Wal-Mart as a store that is jeopardizing the economy but in fact, Wal-Mart is one of the most successful providers to many people around the world. America can benefit greatly as a result of Wal-Mart because of their convenience for the shoppers, low prices, and amount of jobs provided. According to a documentary on Wal-Mart, the company can be described as a “one-stop-shop” (00:05:29-00:05:32). Wal-Mart contains a variety of items that can all be bought at once rather than stopping at one store to the next to buy everything that is needed. Department include food, clothing,

When walking through the aisles of Wal-Mart, almost everything is at a lower price than compared to other stores. For instance, Wal-Mart acknowledges that there will be things in their store that is priced higher than in other stores, therefore Wal-Mart carries out a price match deal to give the customer the low price he or she wants. Price matching is receiving the low price from the other store but buying the item at Wal-Mart. Customers can stretch the value of the dollar when shopping at Wal-Mart. It is estimated that, “Wal-Mart can save a family more than $2,000 a year compared with alternative retailers” (Hoenig 47). Although the estimate doesn’t show what other retail stores the amount of savings is being compared to, it can be assumed that Wal-Mart is will give more for the customer 's dollar. Yes, Wal-Mart pays their employees below the minimum wage levels and can be argued that “its sales clerks maked less, on average, than the federal poverty level” (“Long” 103). However, “Retail workers may take home less pay, but their purchasing power probably still grows thanks to Wal-Mart’s low prices” (Mallaby 622). Wal-Mart’s low prices accommodate for the employees not earning much while working at Wal-Mart. The low prices is one of the many reasons that consumers keep walking through Wal-Mart 's

For the thousands of stores that Wal-Mart has around the world, there has to be enough people to cover the positions to keep the store in top shape and running on a daily basis. Wal-Mart is said to be “the nation’s largest private employer, with 3,372 stores and more than 1 million hourly workers” (Olsson 608). Admittedly, Wal-Mart has been found guilty for “systematically forcing employees to work overtime without pay” (Olsson 608). Nonetheless, Wal-Mart showers their full-time workers with benefits including “competitive wages, profit-sharing, 401(k) plans, paid vacations, life insurance, a discount card, medical coverage, disability insurance, scholarship bonuses and child-care discounts” (Hoenig 47). It is true that not all workers for Wal-Mart will be working full-time to obtain the benefits, but employers can work their way up from their part-time positions to a full-time position. Wal-Mart may have some faults as to how their employees are treated, but there wouldn’t be that many people working for Wal-Mart if it was truly that awful. Not only does Wal-Mart provide Americans with jobs, but across the world Wal-Mart supplies jobs to the Chinese. Chinese workers spend their time at factories earning more than they were working elsewhere to make Wal-Mart products. Statistics show that Wal-Mart 's “$12 billion in imports from China last year accounted for a