SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. unveiled a national TV advertising campaign on Sunday aimed at burnishing the image of the world’s largest retailer.
The 30-second and 60-second spots, which initially broadcast in Omaha, Neb. and Tucson Ariz., in the summer, feature Wal-Mart employees describing cost savings for shoppers, charitable donations and the company’s recent efforts to provide health insurance for eligible employees, according to a press release from the retailer.
Market Watch, January 7, 2007
At Wal-Mart, we know that being an efficient, profitable business and being a good steward of the environment are goals that can be accomplished together. And our environmental goals are simple and straightforward: to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain our resources and our environment. We believe that corporations can develop and implement practices that are good for the environment and good for business. We’re making amazing strides in this endeavor and we’re doing more every day.
from the Sustainability page, on Wal-Mart Facts
A study by the consulting firm Global Insight, which concludes that Wal-Mart’s expansion has saved U.S. consumers $263 billion, is deeply flawed. The statistical analysis generating this widely quoted figure fails the most rudimentary sensitivity checks used in good economic analysis, rendering its conclusions unreliable.
A robust set of research findings shows that Wal-Mart’s entry into local labor markets reduces the pay of workers in competing stores. This effect is largest in the South, where Wal-Mart expansion has been greatest.
Wal-Mart could raise wages and benefits significantly without raising prices, yet still earn a healthy profit. For example, while still maintaining a profit margin almost 50% greater than Costco, a key competitor, Wal-Mart could have raised the wages and benefits of each of its non-supervisory employees in 2005 by more than $2,000 without raising prices a penny
from the Economic Policy Institutes’ Report, “The Wal-Mart debate:A false choice between prices and wages.”
I live in one of those small central Illinois towns where it can be difficult to avoid shopping at Wal-Mart. Actually, there are two Wal-Marts nearby, one here in Charleston, and another about fifteen minutes away in Mattoon. We do have another grocery store, a local chain that was recently swallowed up by County Market, but they can’t beat the prices created by the economies of scale. Wal-Mart has, according to it’s website, “more than 6,600 stores in 13 countries and serve more than 176 million customers around the globe each week.”
If you are relatively affluent (or bored or both) and willing to spend the money, you can always drive an hour north to shop in Champaign, which as a university town has the usual quota of so-called health food groceries and the like. And, even though it makes no sense at all to burn up all that global-warming carbon just to avoid Wal-Mart, that is a fairly common thing among the local liberal cognoscenti, such as it is. (We have our own, much smaller university.) My guess is that Wal-Mart caught on among a lot of academic liberals because it meshes so well with their sense of superiority.