Liberals: Walmart wants YOU!
Walmart is not satisfied with being the biggest food retailer in the world. It wants more. It has saturated national suburban areas, says the New York Times, and is now lobbying hard to get into New York City—that bastion of liberal thinking:
Wal-Mart is pursuing that goal with the intensity, sophistication and checkbook of a full-fledged political campaign, hiring star political consultants, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s former campaign manager, producing expensive television and print advertisements and conducting polls.
And it is doing it with the kind of in-your-face aggressiveness that would make a New Yorker proud.
A glossy brochure it mailed to thousands of city residents appeals to their sense of autonomy, declaring: “You don’t ask the special interests or the political insiders for permission to watch TV. So why should they decide where you’re allowed to shop?”
A spokesperson for Walmart explained that after exhausting all other customer segments:
Now we only have one segment left…People who self-identify themselves as liberals.
In New York, an indisputably Democratic city, Wal-Mart faces a big challenge, both from lawmakers…and from unions, who accuse the retailer of endangering small businesses and mistreating its workers.
Wal-Mart has responded with an all-out push meant to overwhelm and outmaneuver its far less deep-pocketed opposition. It has put out a flurry of television, radio and newspaper advertisements, including one radio spot that accuses opponents of not caring “about how many jobs Wal-Mart would create or how badly people need them.”
Advertising Age is also following the Walmart saga closely. On March 6, it wrote about Walmart’s enormous influence over the retail industry. This could be a force in favor of better industry self-regulation (if such a thing is possible):
Walmart, however, clearly has been out in front of the rest of the industry on many issues. And unlike a government, it isn’t bound by constitutional due process that bogs regulations sometimes for years. No Tea Party representatives are trying to withhold funds for its greenhouse-gas reduction plans. And with billions of dollars at business at stake for its biggest customers, Walmart wields a bigger stick than any fines a government can impose.
And on March 20, Advertising Age wrote about Walmart’s complicated problems with class issues related to its pricing strategies.
The chain so far is having trouble winning back shopping trips and dollars it lost the past two years from middle- and lower-income core consumers, and it also appears to be turning off the group it made inroads with through its last strategic revamp, Project Impact. That initiative cleared promotional merchandise out of aisles and reduced assortments to make stores more visually appealing and easier to shop in for upscale shoppers. But as Walmart scaled back on Impact by adding products back to its shelves and aisles and returned to everyday low pricing, those shoppers have become less satisfied.
Walmart may be family owned, but the family is exceedingly wealthy and runs an absurdly large enterprise—$405 billion in 2010, of which $140 billion was in food. Anything Walmart does has an out-of-proportion impact on customers, its 2 million “associates” workforce, and competing businesses, large and small.
Everything Walmart does deserves scrutiny, and its efforts to move into New York City are no exception.
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Comments
Walmart definitely has a legitimate role to play in satisfying consumers’ needs and desires, particularly among the less affluent socioeconomic strata.
Any food snob who is offended by common fare or modest prices is free to endulge their elitist conspicuous consumption at over-priced boutique shoppes and farmers’ markets.
As for Walmart being an unduly “out-of-proportion” family business, their remarkable success in reaching the masses is precisely what makes them a prime target of evangelizing social reformers and envious hatemongers, alike.
Mal*Wart, the same one that is currently seeing current/former workers bring up a HUGE Sexual Discrimination Class Action Lawsuit for paying women less for performing the same work as men—that Mal*Wart wants to get into the Liberal market?
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Proud to say that I haven’t shopped at a China Mart in 6 years.
[...] Nestle on Walmart’s attempt to breach the defenses in [...]
Wal-Mart in the community is like getting a noxious weed in your garden and being unable to get rid of it. It kills thriving small businesses, crowds out the competition and treats its employees badly. I’m retired now, but worked there as a stop-gap job just before retiring and can’t think of a worse employer than Wal-Mart in my 50 plus years of working. Don’t fall for their glib talk of jobs, keep them out of your neighborhood and support those local small businesses instead!
Here is what the left always misses about Wal Mart. The poor, those whom the liberals claim to care so much for, are able to buy food and affordable prices at Wal Mart. So could it be it is better to shop at Wal Mart than go hungry? Furthermore thanks to the tenacity of one Sam Walton look at how many jobs have been created around the world. More than the 787 billion dollars wasted on so called stimulus two years ago.
Perhaps the government should adopt the Wal Mart business model. Wait it is owned by China too!
>>Here is what the left always misses about Wal Mart. The poor, those whom the liberals claim to care so much for, are able to buy food and affordable prices at Wal Mart.
@Joe. Here is what is missed in that idea. Wal Mart doesn’t pay it’s fair share of corporate income taxes, they are allowed to RENT TO THEMSELVES then WRITE OFF the expense, when they move in to the community this CORPORATION is given TAX-PAYER money, i.e. Corporate Welfare. Why are local gov’ts and the US subsidizing a corporation? I’m not so sure. I guess it’s good for the shareholders and the exec’s.
Also…. those vast parking lots Wal*Mart uses to allow its shoppers to park upon while they shop…they pay $0 in taxes on all that land in the US. They pay their workers less than a live-able wage and encourage them to sign up for government assistance, while the biz & executives rake in the dough. If the GOP cared so much for the working class they would encourage a min. wage increase that hasn’t kept up with inflation since the EARLY 1970s. Wal Mart. A scourge to any community. Always low wages, Always Wal Mart.
@Daniel here is what is missing in that response. Your points do not negate the fact that Wal Mart offers low prices in the market place and jobs for those who will have them. Obviously both have been well received
@Joe, Both low prices and minimum wage jobs are well received because the beneficiaries are not aware of the TRUE costs of affiliating with Mal*Wart. I would like to see a taxpayers advocacy group take them on in court to recover the public subsidies they are receiving at our expense!
The same people here who are vehemently opposed to public aid programs like SNAP/EBT and WIC are the same voices cheering for public-subsidized Mal*Wart to hand out crumbs of crappy industrial food and lousy minimum wage McJobs.
I am so angry and frustrated that our country is quickly becoming a corporate welfare state and our quality of life is rapidly eroding while politicians and corporate titans get hand over fist handouts and underhanded cash payouts.
WalMart needs to police its parking lots – way too many muggings.
Good point, crimewatcher!
I think it was Dillinger who, when asked why he robbed banks replied, simply enough, ‘because that’s where they keep the money’.
A Walmart shopper will have some cash left as they head back to the car, so a ripe target for muggers. A farmer’s market customer, on the other hand, isn’t worth mugging – they’ve already been robbed by the market vendors!
Could it be that Walmart is the model for the state governments that are cutting wages and benefits, firing workers, banning collective bargaining, destroying unions? Is the low level of wages and benefits provided by Walmart the standard for which state governments are aiming? Bring everyone down to the lowest level, instead of raising people up? Effective unions are truly the “rising tide that raises all boats,” affecting non-union as well as union jobs, and if allowed to persist, they might even cause a rise in wages for Walmart employees. For sure, we can’t have that.
So then, let’s use our taxes to provide subsidies to support the Walton family, rather than use our taxes to hire and maintain an effective government work force.
Gramma Windy