Free «Why Wal-Mart is Good» Essay Sample

Wal-Mart is a global retailer with both online and offline transactions. Recently, Wal-Mart was on media spotlight with some crisis that was blown out of proportion by a group of politicians and human rights activists because of the company’s operations. The same groups have also arraigned Wal-Mart before courts of law for what they termed abuse of human rights through denying its workers the right to membership to unions. This has also made some companies to deny Wal-Mart the right to invest because they hope to limit the growth and development of Wal-Mart and bring about its fall. However, these groups opposing Wal-Mart chain stores have a failed to see some of the positive contributions of the Wal-Mart to the society, such as creation of job opportunities, provision of cheap products and services, availing goods to the consumers and regional development. Therefore, they encourage the consumers to avoid buying products from Wal-Mart to cause financial loss on Wal-Mart and eventually its collapse. This paper is a persuasive argument justifying why consumers should buy products from Wal-Mart.

The basic reason to why one should buy products from Wal-Mart is that the retailers offer products at cheaper prizes compared to other retailers (Reich 1). Products at Wal-Mart are generally cheap than the products in other retail stores. The product of same brand, quality, quantity and color are cheaper in Wal-Mart than any other retail shop. The reason may be that Wal-Mart enjoys economies of scale. Wal-Mart buys some goods in bulk and distributes the goods to its outlets. Thus, its products are cheaper than the products of its competitors. Therefore, there is no need for an individual to go buying the same product at an expensive price when there is Wal-Mart offering the products at cheaper prices. Nonetheless, there some people who are arguing that one should not buy from Wal-Mart because offering products at cheaper prices makes other small-scale retailers businesses to collapse. Wal-Marts comparative advantage is to offer products and services at cheaper prices (Reich 1). Therefore, other retailers who feel threatened should stop being lazy and focus on countering competition from Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has never advised any of its customers to avoid products from its competitors and the industry has never forced the customers to buy products from Wal-Mart. The customers do that out of their own will there if there is any person to blame it is the customers not the Wal-Mart.

Additionally, Wal-Mart has lowered its prices because it desires to see suppliers removing costs from supply chain and offering products at cheaper prices. Wal-mart expects that the suppliers will stop exploiting the customers. Most suppliers earn supernormal profits from their businesses but when there is an extra cost in production, the suppliers shifts the cost to the consumers. To counter this practice, Wal-Mart lowered its prices. Moreover, countries like china produce cheaper products and sell them to American suppliers who charge extra prices making the increase in cost of life of an American citizen. Wal-Mart is protecting the consumer from exploitation. Besides, small-scale companies have not failed because of Wal-Mart existence and low prices in the market (Tierney 1). What happened is that those who held high prices had lesser sales while the suppliers who held low prices increased their sales and that is the trend. Some small-retailers have reported that since establishment of Wal-Mart in their region they have experienced increased sales because people frequently visit the region to buy cheap products from Wal-Mart and when they find their products cheap, they end up buying from them. Therefore, there Wal-Mart has not driven small-scale retailers out of business. It has only stopped those who want to exploit consumers. It is for this reason that consumers should support Wal-Mart through buying its products.

Apart from that, it is important to note that suppliers, politicians and labor unions activists who are on the forefront complaining about the workers oppression but not the workers themselves. If there any workers, it is only a few and it is normal. Who would not desire to have more financial benefits anyway? This problem is not a big issue as it appears. The protesters of Wal-Mart development blew this issue out of proportion for the following reasons. Maich (1) argues that the Labor unions are in protest because Wal-Mart does not allow the workers to register with the union meaning there is no more money for the unions. The suppliers are in the protest because they want to reap more profits through consumer exploitation and if there any workers, it is because it is normal for employees to demand for more money but not because Wal-Mart oppressed them. It is only 48% of Wal-Mart workers across the globe who receives health care insurance benefits from the company and 36% of workers from America receives this benefit. To understand how the company deals with healthcare benefits, it is important that one understands the composition of the workers. The company only has 7% of workers who support families as the rest are senior citizens seeking for second income and students or youth with part-time employment who already have healthcare insurance cover from other companies. Therefore, there is no need to pay for the same service twice (Tierney 1. This explains why more workers struggle to get jobs in Wal-Mart despite of the reports that it oppresses the workers. It is for these reasons that consumers should ignore all the propaganda about Wal-Mart and stand with industry at this time when the rich business people want to destroy the company that protects its consumers.

Moreover, one should buy products from Wal-Mart because there are other ways of making the company deal with its problems if there any. Urging buyers to avoid buying products from Wal-Mart is not a permanent solution to the problem. Asking buyers to stop buying products from Wal-Mart is unwise and destructive to the American economy. Wal-Mart pays taxes to the American government in millions of dollars on yearly basis. Moreover, Wal-Mart has reduced the levels of poverty through employing of the citizens (Tierney 1). Thus, when customers avoid buying products from Wal-Mart, the company will fail and it will be unable to pay taxes and maintain workers. This will have a negative impact on the economy of America. Moreover, it is important to note that the company will only fail in America but not other countries because other countries like Britain also have problems with its health care and in other continents like Asia and Africa, the workers are satisfied by what they get from company. Therefore, those against Wal-Mart should force legislators to form more rules governing workers participation in the union and the government should pay the workers insurance policies (Maich 1).

Consumers need to support Wal-Mart in its struggle to protect the consumers from exploitation through provision of goods and services at cheaper prices. Furthermore, those opposing Wal-Mart have no basis and special reasons to why they are accusing this company. They do that out of misunderstanding of the company ways of operation. Consumers should also buy products from Wal-Mart because the company does not oppress its workers and if it does, there are other ways to make the company play its responsibility. Lastly, refusal to buy products from the company will make it collapse, render thousands of workers jobless, reduce on the government revenue and reduce the rate of sales in some places.