(This week, PR News editors Phil Hall and Aaron Jenkins measure the PR surrounding a certain mega-retailer from Bentonville, AR.)
AARON: I admit it. I don't shop at Wal-Mart. Haven't done so since last October - a period I wryly call BWM (Before Wal-Mart) and AWM (After Wal-Mart). Why the
consumer boycott? Well, at my previous job as a reporter for a weekly newspaper in Pennsylvania, I attempted to measure the economic and social impact of a Wal-Mart Supercenter
opening in a Main Street community. My findings were interesting, but nonetheless left a sour taste in my mouth. The boons: Higher tax base for the school district, $30,000
distributed to local organizations, and, of course, more employment opportunities. The bane: Erosion of the economic viability for little ol' mom-and-pop businesses.
PHIL: I admit it. I shop at Wal-Mart...and I loooooove it. The selection, the prices and the level of customer service are (in my view) superior to what I find
at other mega-retailers. The negative PR generated by the Wal-Mart haters does not concern me and, I imagine, most consumers don't care either. Every decade had a corporate
force that gets a ton of bad PR - Japanese conglomerates in the 1980s, Microsoft in the 1990s, and now Wal-Mart is the bad guy - but strangely the fears of global takeover
never quite materialized in any case. So, what happened to those mom-and-pop stores in your Pennsylvania story?
AARON: With surprising irony, only one business saw a slight drop in revenue, while the others weren't fazed, and a few even benefited three months after the Goliath
Wal-Mart opened. Could this be an anomaly? Perhaps, given the myriad of nationwide ma-and-pas unraveling into obscurity from the bullish big-box. And Wal-Mart's ruler-of-the-
galaxy reputation isn't waning, as thousands of more of its stores will open this year.
PHIL: Ah, but sometimes the PR imagery and the bottom line isn't connected. There are fewer Target stores than Wal-Mart stores, but guess what? The New York
Times reported on May 4 that while Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the country, the revenue at individual Target stores have "been far more robust than at Wal-Mart, which
has generally relied on new stores for growth." Target, not unlike Wal-Mart, has also vigorously fended off attempts to have its workforce unionized. However, Wal-Mart is the
one who gets the negative PR on that front while Target is barely mentioned.
AARON: If Wal-Mart took its banner of "Always Low Prices" and applied it to more proactive PR strategies, the perch at the top would be a little less jagged. When
you're the Goliath of a sector, the PR bull's-eye is a lot bigger.