[Music] Walmart is probably one of the world's most polarizing companies for better or worse it has transformed the retail industry and impacted most of our Lives now I want to acknowledge right away that there are millions of people out there that absolutely love these stores and even rely on them to an extent Walmart is famous for offering some of the lowest prices on a wide selection of products I still associate the store with that smiley face that would go around rolling back the prices in those commercials starting in the 1990s and that has essentially been
the main idea behind it the name Walmart comes from the company's founder Sam Walton who opened the first location in Arkansas on July 2nd 1962 from that day his belief was that the customer played so much importance on price that if he sold the same item as a competitor for even just a little less money the customer would be more likely to buy it from him and clearly that has proven to be true Walmart has become one of the all time greatest retail success stories by using this low price strategy it allows people to buy
items that they otherwise would not have been able to afford however it has not all been positive to a point where a lot of people have genuine hatred for it there are multiple lists out there ranking the most hated companies where Walmart has been included the American customer satisfaction index based on customer surveys consistently places Walmart below the average of all supermarkets and on this channel in the comments many people people have requested that I make this exact video so the hatred is out there and my intention today is to objectively try and explain it
I want to be clear that I am not trying to bash the company or to convince you to hate them I know it can be a fine line but I promise I simply want to present some of the biggest reasons as to why people do hate them starting off the list with maybe the most obvious one the fact that Walmart is so big again it was started in 1962 and by the end of the 1970s not even two decades later it had reached the billion doll sales mark it was faster than any company had ever
done it before in 1990 it surpassed Sears to become the country's biggest retailer in 1993 Walmart introduced their private label brand Great Value that has since become widely recognized in 1997 it replaced Woolworths on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and in 2002 it officially became the largest company in the world when measured by Revenue it was the first non Manufacturing Company told the number one spot on the Fortune 500 list and today it is still the biggest with $648 billion in Revenue coming from over 10,000 stores and obviously people tend to get skeptical when a
company becomes this large there have been numerous concerns along the way regarding monopolies being too controlling reducing competition things along those lines I would say that those are understandable concerns partially because a big part of their growth strategy has been to eliminate competition through various acqu Acquisitions Walmart's first ever major acquisition was in 1977 it was for a Midwest chain of stores called more value followed by other Regional chains to help them spread across the country Sam's Club as you probably know is their chain of membership warehouse stores much like hosco well it was taken
to a new level in 1993 when Walmart spent about $300 million to buy Pace warehouse stores that was a competing chain of 93 units owned by Kmarts and in the 199 when Walmart was first trying to expand internationally they would typically enter a new country by purchasing an already established major retailer over there in 1991 they started a joint venture with the largest retailer in Mexico and then later on in the decade bought a controlling stake of that company in 1994 they entered Canada by acquiring over 100 wool Coast stores for over $300 million in
1997 they entered Europe by purchasing a German retailer and in 1999 May the most extreme example is when they entered the United Kingdom by acquiring the third largest supermarket in the area for over $10 billion I don't think anyone would deny that Walmart has been strategically taking over the retail world for over 60 years now and that can be concerning being that large comes with certain responsibilities because just about anything they do can have a massive impact that is going to play into the rest of the reasons on my list so I'm going to move
right along and talk about how Walmart has been hurting small businesses honestly you can say this about almost any large company but Walmart is like an extreme example of it the company buys so much stuff and operates on such a large scale that it is able to sell items at prices that realistically cannot be matched by local competitors Plus on top of that historically Walmart has specifically targeted areas with relatively small populations of less than 25,000 people just like Sam Walton envisioned from the start when a new w walart opens in town people are typically
attracted to the comparatively lower prices and stop shopping at the existing smaller stores ultimately forcing them to shut down it is all part of what has been labeled the Walmart effect that was the title of a 2006 book by Charles Fishman that outlines it nicely I want to emphasize that a new Walmart does have positives it creates jobs brings attention to the area and even can help certain businesses like restaurants and gas stations it all depends on who you are and how you look at it but Walmart has for forever changed local economies and shifted
consumers away from locally owned businesses please let me know if I'm right but I imagine anyone watching this that is a big supporter of small businesses is probably not the biggest fan of Walmart I feel like a lot of this does not require too much explanation so I'm going to move on to the next reason on my list buying practices Walmart has a reputation of sort of using their power against suppliers I mean having your product in Walmart is a big opportunity it puts it in front of of so many potential customers but since Walmart
puts such an emphasis on low prices those suppliers are now motivated to find ways to make their product for less money that can mean cutting Corners reducing salaries using cheaper materials or in many cases Outsourcing production to a different country like China yeah a lot of the stuff sold in Walmart comes from China I guess over the past few decades Walmart has accounted for about 10% of all Chinese Imports into the US clearly this is a source of disapproval for many people because it creates more jobs and helps the nation's economy if the stuff were
to be made within the country I mean think about it if all the people within the country are not earning money to spend at Walmart well the whole system kind of falls apart so in that way it is in their benefit to keep things domestic and that has been repeatedly acknowledged by the company itself going all the way back to the 1980s in 1985 Walmart sent out a letter to 3,000 American manufacturers and wholesalers saying that they wanted to buy more stuff than was made in America there was a whole campaign surrounding it then later
in 2013 they committed to buying $250 billion in goods manufactured in the United States over the next 10 years and in 2021 they announced a new commitment to invest $350 billion in products from the US over the next decade as of right now they say that 2third of their merchandise sold in the US comes from within the country which is significantly higher than it had been in the past so there have clearly been efforts and improvements over the years though many will argue that the process has been too slow and still has a ways to
go the next reason that Walmart receives so much hatred stems from unhappy employees and there are so many ways we could look at this with the exception of government militaries Walmart is the largest employer in the world with over 2 million employees and 75% of them work in the United States I mean labor is their single biggest cost anyone watching this that happens to be one of those two million people please I would love to hear about your experience working there positive or negative but overall when it comes to treatment of employees Walmart has not
had the strongest reputation Sam Walton was very much against unionizing and that has continued to be the attitude from the company they have even gone so far as to allegedly close stores shortly after unions have been formed within them there have been numerous complaints or protests or lawsuits over the years regarding just about anything you can imagine employees not being paid for overtime or being forced to work overtime scheduling lack of benefits surveillance being discriminated when it comes to race gender disabilities one that stands out to me is from 2021 where a jury awarded a
woman with Down Syndrome over $100 million in a discrimination lawsuit but probably the most widespread complaint has been about wages Walmart has had abnormally High turnover rates and not being paid enough has been a top reason for Employees leaving I want to contrast this with the fact that many successful retailers have gone out of their way to make their employees feel valued because it translates to their performance and that translates to the customers happy employees are more likely to be friendly helpful and ambitious so unhappy ones can lead to the opposit I apologize if this
seems disrespectful to anybody working at Walmart but it could be a big reason behind those low customer satisfaction scores however Walmart has been making efforts to improve things in 2015 they committed $2.7 billion to be put toward training and a higher minimum wage that has continued to increase today they say that the average hourly wage for a US Frontline associate is more than ,750 per hour again many criticize that it still needs to be higher but there has been progress for the final reason on my list because this is a wide subject that I want
to limit to only five I'm going to use a little bit of a loophole here and talk about a few remaining ethical issues I acknowledge there is some overlap going on because obviously ethics plays into all of this but these are a little more straightforward things like bribery for example in 2019 Walmart settled a 7-year investigation with the US government by paying $283 million because for over a decade Walmart subsidiaries in various countries employed third parties who may have made sketchy payments to foreign officials another big ethical issue is child labor in 1993 there was
a dateline report about children in Bangladesh making things for 5 cents an hour that were going to be sold at Walmart stores and then unrelated 12 years later they were fined for hiring 16 and 17year olds to operate hazardous equipment one of them was even injured while using a chainsaw also there have been environmental concerns in 2013 the company pleaded guilty to dumping hazardous waste after a 10-year investigation but the bigger concerns have been over the pollution from their everyday operations the energy from running all those stores transport things from China just again when you
are that big almost anything you do can have a large impact the company did start some major sustainability efforts and has continued them as of right now their goal is to have zero emissions by the year 2040 let me know in the comments what do you think about Walmart whether it be as a customer as an employee or just as a member of society it affects all of us I know it is going to be polarizing but it is obviously not a black and white issue so I hope that most of us can understand the
good and the bad that has come from it as always I want to make sure it's clear that my list does not include every potential reason someone might dislike Walmart but rather a list of things that I felt were the most significant and trust me I really had to be selective with it if you feel there is something that should be added or even subtracted from it please let me know and any other thoughts you have about Walmart leave them in the comments I'd like to hear what you have to say thank you for watching
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