I was reading an article about Jeff Bezos explaining how several big corporations can maintain a stellar image while some companies tarnish their brand name when they become omnipresent in the marketplace. This made me wonder how Apple, Amazon, and Google can maintain such a stellar reputation among consumers whereas other massive firms such as Wal-mart, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft have such a strong brand presence but is disliked by the general public. My question is, however, if a bad brand name indeed has a detrimental effect seeing as how Wal-mart and Goldman Sachs remains corporate giants in the marketplace.

Wal-mart is notorious for their brand image with the Mexican bribery scandal incident where Wal-mart tried to bribe the government into allowing Wal-mart to open various stores in the South American country. Moreover, they are also infamous for being accused to predatory pricing – the act of decreasing prices for the pure purpose of driving out small, domestic competitors.

Goldman Sachs is another company with a bad reputation stemming from allegations that they would “rip off” customers. The executive director, Greg Smith, tendered his resignation, publicly announcing that the working environment at Goldman Sachs was detrimental.

The question follows: how do these corporations manage to be so prominent in the market place if consumers dislike these firms? Consumers accuse one another of being hypocritical – telling one another to support local businesses but shopping at Wal-mart – and yet Wal-mart attracts so many customers.  In Wal-mart’s case, the low prices of their goods outweighs their bad reputation and in a culture that values frugality, this is enough for them to ignore the controversies.

Personally, I assert that a good brand reputation will definitely lead to a more successful firm; however, I am ambiguous about how a bad brand reputation will effect a company the size of Wal-mart or Microsoft.

Sources:

1) http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-why-we-love-or-fear-companies-2013-10

2)http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/business/why-i-left-book-about-goldman-falls-short.html?_r=0