Walmarts Permanent Reputation

In our prosperous and vastly dynamic society, businesses are constantly looking for ways
to succeed and beat out competitors. One of the biggest influences of success in a company is
reputation. What is a company without a reputation? Established by media attention, word of
mouth, and individual perceptions, reputation allows for consumers, shareholders, and
organizations to form an opinion about a company. Reputation also helps categorize a company
or products quality and initiates brand loyalty to that company. As the worlds largest
corporation, Walmart has not only made a name for itself worldwide, but has also influenced
various changes in the global market and economy from their business alone. As a result of
various lawsuits, including discrimination and questionable business practices, Walmart has
gained an untrustworthy and impersonal reputation with customers. Often perceived by the
public today as a big, corporate, money-hungry organization, Walmart has been increasingly
attempting to alter the image they portray to the public in an endeavoring effort to change their
reputation, but in the end, has anything really changed?
Reputation is often difficult to define, very subjective, and the single, yet biggest, factor
of a growth in a business. Reputation is an intangible asset that allows the company to better
manage the expectations and needs of its various stakeholders, creating differentiation and
barriers vis--vis its competitors (Schreiber, 2008). Reputation is what attracts customers,
creates brand loyalty, influences product and company growth, and helps create a successful
business. A strong corporate reputation suggests that the products and services being offered by
the firm are of higher quality (Carmeli and Tisher, 2005) and that the firm is responsible and will
treat its customers well (Schreiber, 2008). By having a higher reputation for quality, a company
is able to charge more for their products, increasing their profits and making shareholders,

investors, and business owners all happy. Revenue and reputation are strongly correlated, and
can make or break business. Reputation also helps increase the value of relationships by linking
all components, (shareholders, associates, managers, consumers), of a business together
(Schreiber, 2008). Keeping these components of the business happy by maintaining a good
reputation leads to an overall better work environment. For example, if an employee has pride in
his or her work, more effort and pride will be put into their jobs, resulting in better product or
service. This idea of encouraging pride in employees work and emphasizing the value of
relationships between the members of a corporation was a result of the ideas of William
Demings, a man that believed in quality not quantity (Deming, 1999). With all of this in mind,
Walmart has yet to change their reputation amongst American society despite multiple attempts,
including good press and charitable donations. Despite their attempts to solve their reputation
problem by creating positive media attention in an effort to overpower bad media attention,
Walmart has yet to solve the root of their reputation problem.
With 2.2 million associates, more than 11,000 stores worldwide, and a colossal 466
billion dollars in revenue (2012), Walmart has made quite an impact on our society and
economies past, present, and future (Walmart, 2014). The amount of money Walmart makes and
their strong presence in everyday American life has made them one of the most successful
businesses ever. But with this strong of an influence on the public, Walmart has raised the
standards for themselves to have a good reputation amongst the thousands of Americans that they
serve everyday. In addition to their retail stores, Walmart has also founded various organizations
that provide for charities, donate money, time and necessities to the poor, and has started a
movement to go green. Over the years, Walmart has dominated with sales in food, appliances,
cookware, household items, and various other everyday needs. This company advertises to the

lower class with their Help save you money so you can live better motto, and in turn, has
drastically affected the economy. In many cases, because of the economic power, Walmart
presents themselves as invincible, but in truth, Walmart's reputation is ruining their sales. With
a target demographic of lower and middle class, the high middle class and higher class
population are turning to more quality-focused stores, rather than stores that advertise lower
prices. This eliminates the profit that could be obtained by these different classes and gives
Walmart the reputation as a store that provides low quality, cheaply made, and inferior products.
Being such a powerful, corporate company, Walmart has been in the media spotlight for
decades. Accusations of discrimination, underpaid workers, and questionable labor laws have
continuously popped up in the media over the course of the past 10 years. One of the biggest
issues they face is their issue with underpaying or wrongly paying associates. Walmart has
repeatedly been accused of violating many labor and working laws, the most common being low
paying wages, deficient working conditions and bribery scandals in Mexico (Reuters, 2013).
Walmarts response to this was to introduce a program called The Real Walmart that attempts
to focus on helping Walmart customers succeed, helping Walmart associates succeed, and how
Walmarts efficiencies and direct-from-manufacturer approach help deliver low prices
(Walmart, 2014). This response from Walmart directly relates to their desire to save people
money to help them live better, but what does that do for the associates who still do not get paid
enough, are being cheated out of healthcare by being only hired for part-time, and the multiple
scandals involving bribery of authorities overseas. Walmarts reactions to bad press may
temporarily improve their reputation, but in the long run they do not directly deal with the root of
the issues they face. Derrick Plummer, a spokesman for the organization Making Change at
Walmart, says reputation reform could start with a simple step, one thats admittedly more

expensive than a few million bucks on an ad campaign: pay workers more (Ross, 2013). This is
the root of their issue and if they really wanted to help America and help their associates they
would stop putting that money towards other charities and start focusing on taking care of their
workers and reputation.
Another major issue Walmart has faced over the years is the various accusations of
discrimination against women in their workplace. All over the country, women have been
stepping forward and sharing their stories about dealing with discriminative behavior from
authoritative figures in Walmart. This mainly includes sexist, inappropriate comments to women
associates and lack of promotions. As of the end of 2013, Walmart has made no direct effort to
correct this and repeatedly denies any gender bias at the stores. the initial complaint filed in
2001 that sought to represent 1.6 million women nationwide. But the U.S. Supreme Court tossed
out that class action lawsuit in 2011, ruling it found no convincing proof of company-wide
discrimination on pay and promotion policy (Berman, 2013). Walmart's response to this nationwide lawsuit resulted in them denying all accusations and getting off the hook in court,
regardless of if the accusations were true or not. Indifferent to the court ruling, Walmart made no
effort to help their frustrated employees by not giving into their demands in court, and not
commenting on the specific accusations made. The one thing Walmart did do was start a
campaign called Global Womens Economic Empowerment. This focuses on Increase
sourcing from women-owned businesses, empower nearly 1 million women through training and
promote diversity and inclusion representation within our merchandising and professional
services suppliers (Walmart, 2014). Yes, this created positive media attention and public praise
for Walmart, but why not establish this within the court system when all of this was an issue back
in 2011? This campaign is planned to be in effect by 2016 which will hopefully result in

satisfied women associates. But after denying and not commenting on the ongoing battle for
women working at Walmart, how much can they really improve reputation after contradicting
themselves by ignoring the accusations, then starting a whole movement for women based off of
those same accusations.
Walmart has proven to be an extremely successful and thriving business, but lacks the
ambition to improve their reputation. It is understood that Walmart is a business and the main
focus is to make profit, but with a company of this size and this amount of impact on society,
they take on much more responsibility than an average company. Walmart had been extremely
successful in international operations, their philanthropy, creating a target demographic,
introducing a wide variety of products, and creating customer loyalty. But with all this success
comes responsibility to manage and increase reputation. Walmart lacks this ambition and has
created a negative name for themselves within the upper-class, has been a target of many
lawsuits over the years, and often shows little differentiation about their presence in the media.
In order to solve this media presence issue, it would require a lot of funding, but Walmart is the
biggest corporate company in the world, and can afford to rebuild their reputation by satisfying
associate demands and making peace with the multiple lawsuits involving labor laws,
discrimination, and corporate responsibly. Walmart has passed various opportunities to improve
themselves. They could pay associates a few cents more per hour at the cost of the company and
drastically improve the public opinion of their company.
They have also been making a big push towards being environmentally friendly, focused
more on selling American made products, and helped promote healthy eating. These few
objectives have helped them increase their reputation already but they still have a long way to
go. With the completion of higher quality stores such as Whole Foods and Earth Fare, Walmart

is losing an important demographic of people and could potentially succumb to their reputation
and drastically decreases sales. Social media and online presence is becoming increasingly more
and more important to our society and economy. Walmart has shown to be a very successful on
social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with quick, effective, and 24/7 responses
to customers via comments, posts, and photos. Walmart also has the strength of strong online
sales, but is losing out to new customers due to competitors and their lacking reputation.
Our future is rapidly changing and we are constantly molding to shape the opinions and
demands of society. Maintaining these opinions and making sure the public sees the business in
a positive light is an extremely important aspect to a company. This reputation determines past,
present, and the future of a product of service. A big company like Walmart is held to a high
standard to keep up a positive reputation among its consumers. As evidence in the various
lawsuits of discrimination and violation of labor laws, Walmart has not maintained their
reputation. With potential in their many charitable organizations, Walmart is heading in the right
direction. With more focus on the root of the issue, Walmart could overcome this bad media
presence, and rebuild themselves as a good quality company.

Works Cited
Berman, Jillian. "Women Claiming Gender Bias At Walmart Denied Class Action Status." The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 03 Aug. 2013. Web. 26 May 2014.
"Deming, William Edwards." Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. 1999.
Encyclopedia.com. 27 May. 2014 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

Reuters. "PGGM, Dutch Pension Group, Pulls Walmart Investments Over Labor Concerns." The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 02 July 2013. Web. 26 May 2014.
Ross, Winston. "Walmarts Goodwill Tour: We Love Our Workers and America, Too." The Daily
Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast. 29 June 2013. Web. 26 May 2014.
Schreiber, Elliot. Reputation. Institute for Public Relations. (2008): Print . May 25, 2014.
"Walmart Corporate - Walmart Corporate: News & Views." Walmart Corporate - Walmart
Corporate: News & Views. Web. 24 May 2014.