首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Wal-Mart Wal-Mart is more than just the world’s largest retailer. It is an economic force, a cultural phenomenon and a light
Wal-Mart Wal-Mart is more than just the world’s largest retailer. It is an economic force, a cultural phenomenon and a light
admin
2012-10-11
20
问题
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart is more than just the world’s largest retailer. It is an economic force, a cultural phenomenon and a lightning rod for controversy. It all started with a simple philosophy from founder Sam Walton: Offer shoppers lower prices than they get anywhere else. That basic strategy has shaped Wal-Mart’s culture and driven the company’s growth.
Now that Wal-Mart is so huge, it has unprecedented power to shape labor markets globally and change the way entire industries operate.
History of Wal-Mart
Sam Walton opened his first five-and-dime in 1950. His vision was to keep prices as low as possible. Even if his margins weren’t as fat as competitors, he figured he could make up for that in volume. He was right.
In the early 1960s, Walton opened his first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas. The company continued to grow, going public in 1970 and adding more stores every year. In 1990, Wal-Mart surpassed key rival Kmart in size. Two years later, it surpassed Sears.
Walton continued to drive an old pickup truck and share budget-hotel rooms with colleagues on business trips, even after Wal-Mart made him very rich. He demanded that his employees also keep expenses to a bare minimum—a mentality that is still at the heart of Wal-Mart culture more than a decade after Walton’s death. The company has continued to grow rapidly after his death in 1992 and now operates four retail divisions—Wal-Mart Supercenters, Wal-Mart discount stores, Neighborhood Market stores and Sam’s Club warehouses.
Wal-Mart Strategy
Let’s start with technology. Wal-Mart pushed the retail industry to establish the universal bar code, which forced manufacturers to adopt common labeling. The bar allowed retailers to generate all kinds of information—creating a subtle shift- of power from manufacturers to retailers. Wal-Mart became especially good at exploiting the information behind the bar code. And thus it is considered a pioneer in developing sophisticated technology to track its stock and cut the fat out of its supply chain.
Recently, Wal-Mart became the first major retailer to demand manufacturers use radio frequency identification technology (RFID). The technology uses radio frequencies to transmit data stored on small tags attached to pallets (货盘) or individual products. RFID tags hold significantly more data than bar codes.
The frugal culture, established by Walton, also plays into Wal-Mart’s success. The company has been criticized for the relatively poor wages and health care plans that it offers to rank-and-file employees. It has also been accused of demanding that hourly workers put in overtime without pay. Store managers often work more than 70 hours per week.
This culture is also present at the company’s headquarters. Wal-Mart is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, instead of an expensive city like New York. The building is unattractive and dull. You won’t catch executives in quality cars and you won’t see them dragging into work at 9:30 a.m. Executives fly coach and often share hotel rooms with colleagues. They work long hours, typically arriving at work before 6:30 a.m. and working halfdays on Saturdays.
The central goal of Wal-Mart is to keep retail prices low—and the company has been very successful at this. Experts estimate that Wal-Mart saves shoppers at least 15 percent on a typical cart of groceries. Everything—including the technology and corporate culture—feeds into that ultimate goal of delivering the lowest prices possible. Wal-Mart also pushes its suppliers, some say cruelly, to cut prices. In The Wal-Mart Effect, author Charles Fishman discusses how the price of a four-pack of GE light bulbs decreased from $2.19 to 88 cents during a five-year period.
The Power
Because of Wal-Mart’s massive size, it has incredible power. It has driven smaller retailers out of business; forced manufacturers to be more efficient, often leading these suppliers to move manufacturing jobs overseas; and changed the way that even large and established industries do business.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that a new Wal-Mart in town spells doom for local pharmacies, grocery stores, sporting goods stores, etc. Economist Emek Basker, Ph.D., attempted to quantify the impact. Her study found that in a typical United States county, when a Wal-Mart opens, three other retailers close within two years and four close within five years. While the Wal-Mart might employ 300 people, another 250 people working in retail lose their jobs within five years in that county.
Wal-Mart has life or death decisions over (almost) all the consumer goods industries that exist in the United States, because it is the number-one supplier-retailer of most of our consumer goods—not just clothes, shoes, toys, but home appliances, electronic products, sporting goods, bicycles, groceries, food.
The stories of how Wal-Mart pushes manufacturers into selling the same product at lower and lower prices are legendary. One example is Lakewood Engineering & Manufacturing Co. in Chicago, a fan manufacturer. In the early 1990s, a 20-inch box fan costs $20. Wal-Mart pushed the manufacturer to lower the price, and Lakewood responded by automating the production process, which meant layoffs. Lakewood also forced its own suppliers to knock down the prices of parts. Then, in 2000, Lakewood opened a factory in China, where workers earn 25 cents an hour. By 2003, the price on the fan in a Wal-Mart store had dropped to about $10.
Wal-Mart’s impact extends beyond just small suppliers. It also affects how even major, established companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo do business. At Wal-Mart’s request, Coke and its largest bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises announced that they are changing the way they deliver PowerAde in the United States, altering a basic distribution method for drinks that has been in place for more than a century. Coke also now allows Wal-Mart in on the research-and-development process. In 2005, Coke planned to launch one new diet cola called Coke Zero. At Wal-Mart’s request, it changed the name to Diet Coke with Splenda and launched a separate product called Coke Zero. This kind of retailer involvement was unheard of at Coke a decade ago. Pepsi also came up with a line of diet drinks, called Slice One, to initially be sold exclusively in Wal-Mart.
The Controversy
Wal-Mart is a polarizing force. The controversies have involved a broad range of topics from Wal-Mart selling guns, to the company’s environmental policies, to the kind of health care Wal-Mart offers employees, to outsourcing of jobs. In this section, we will explore two of the biggest areas of controversies—labor practices at the company and Wal-Mart’s impact on the American economy.
Wal-Mart has come under fire on a number of labor issues. There may be a dark side to the frugal culture. At the end of 2005, the company faced dozens of lawsuits across the country for allegedly not paying workers overtime. Women have also accused Wal-Mart of discrimination, and employees have said that it squashes efforts to unionize and doesn’t provide decent healthcare.
Not everyone is down on Wal-Mart. Andrew Young, a former United Nations ambassador and former mayor of Atlanta, heads up a group backed by Wal-Mart that is supposed to spread a positive message about the company. "You need to look at who’s complaining about Wal-Mart," Young told USA Today in March 2006. "If it’s not 100 million people shopping there every week and it’s not 8,000 people competing for 500 jobs (at a new Atlanta store), who is it? They’re complaining because they’re wrong and they don’t understand that ending poverty means generating wealth and not just fighting to redistribute the existing wealth."
There is heated debate about whether Wal-Mart is good for the American economy, and well-respected economists come down firmly on both sides of this debate. Some experts say it is good for the economy because it keeps prices low, both at its stores and at other retailers. Other experts argue that Wal-Mart is bad for the economy because it drives competing retailers out of business and forces manufacturers to move jobs overseas to keep expenses down.
In order to achieve the lowest-price goal, Wal-Mart even pushes _____ to cut prices.
选项
A、the wholesalers
B、the retailers
C、the suppliers
D、the middlemen
答案
C
解析
原文该段描述了Wal-Mart如何达到“最低廉价格”的目标,在本题的四个选项中,只有选项C在该段提及.因此本题应选C。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/zDb7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
A、TheculturalheritageofAmericans.B、HowtodealwithAmericans.C、HowtodobusinesswithAmericans.D、HowtotraveltoAmer
TheeconomicdownsizingoftheUnitedStatespresentsagoodopportunitytoaddressthedownsizingoftheaverageAmerican,say
TheeconomicdownsizingoftheUnitedStatespresentsagoodopportunitytoaddressthedownsizingoftheaverageAmerican,say
TheeconomicdownsizingoftheUnitedStatespresentsagoodopportunitytoaddressthedownsizingoftheaverageAmerican,say
A、Amoreeconomicaldieselrun.B、Characteristicsofanewtypeofrun.C、Whereanewenergysourceislocated.D、Howtodevelop
Smallfarmsandthelackofmoderntechnologyhave______agriculturalproduction.
The______estimateofgainsingrossnationalproductsuggestedafastrecoveryfromeconomicrecession.
Cultural________indicatesthathumanbeingshandtheirlanguagesdownfromonegenerationtoanother.
随机试题
甲状腺危象好发于甲状腺手术后多少小时
简述政治经济制度对教育的影响。
实质性程序的类型包括()
劳动强度指数为18时,按我国体力劳动强度分级标准其劳动强度级别为
火灾自动报警系统对火灾声光警报器进行调试,逐一将火灾声光警报器与火灾报警控制器相连,接通电源。操作火灾报警控制器使火灾声光警报器启动,火灾声光警报器的光信号在100~5001x环境光线下()m处应清晰可见。
一多层民用建筑,耐火等级为一级,该建筑防火分区最大允许建筑面积是()m2。
报关单位收到海关发送的“接受申报”的报文和“现场交单”或“放行交单”通知,表示电子申报成功。()
存款人尚未清偿其开户银行债务的,不得申请撤销该银行结算账户。()
公安工作的一项重要任务就是办案。通过办案( )。
下列有关股权自由现金流量表述正确的有()。
最新回复
(
0
)