Walmart: The High Cost Of Low Prices FULL MOVIE

The link above is a documentary of one of the world’s biggest retail store, Walmart which offers the lowest prices for its customers on a variety of products. According to Porter’s Generic Strategy grid, this company falls under the broad cost leadership box as discussed in class. This documentary however makes people aware of how the businesses manages to do so and what the consequences are.

The following article talks about how the film accuses Walmart of keeping its workers in poverty by paying low wages and charges high health benefits costs,causing small businesses to become bankrupt, and being unconcerned about the environment in the process of making high profits. Walmart’s strategy is based on faithlessly cutting costs, allowing it to mark down its competitors, being the reason for its tremendous profits.

Labour experts and former employees were interviewed to figure out all these internal detail. This leads to great various ethical issues and links to the argument discussed in class about integrity of business, social corporate responsibility and how companies should realize whether it is okay to make enormous profits at the cost of sacrificing ethics.

Also, it leads us into the thinking about the fact that how businesses with low cost strategies are able to pull them of and what the real hidden cost behind their strategies are.