Most Americans Hold an "Unfavorable" Opinion of Wal-Mart

Agent Disco pointed out to me that a poll released last week conducted by Zogby International, shows that an amazingly high 55% of people feel they have an "unfavorable" view of Wal-Mart.

Rather than chalking this up to everybody hating Wal-mart, I'd like to propose that what this really demonstrates is an obvious bias against Wal-mart in the media. The question that got people to answer "unfavorably" is "In general, thinking back on what you have recently seen, heard or read about Wal-Mart [bold is my emphasis] in the last few months, does it make you much more favorable, somewhat more favorable, somewhat less favorable, or much less favorable toward Wal-Mart?"

While it is fairly obvious that there is a group of people in the world who hate Wal-mart and everything it stands for and believe that it is one of the signs of the coming apocalypse, most people in America do their shopping there. An article in Variety today broadcast that over a half-million Garth Brooks CDs were sold at Wal-mart online through pre-orders and one day of sales (Nov 25th). That's right. One day.

We've had our own debates here on the site about the virtues and vices of Wal-mart. Some of the criticisms are valid. They used to treat their suppliers like trash. They'd sign one up for an order of 1 million units a month, then when the supplier geared his or her production line to produce that many, they'd come back and say, "We've found another supplier that will beat your price. Can you match or beat them?" That sounds like cold-hearted business to me. But they've also done a lot of beneficial things for our whole country. There has been talk that Wal-mart has had an enormous effect on keeping inflation low in the last decade. Just under half the people in the US visit Wal-mart every week (138 million).

So why do people, the media and special interest groups pick on them? I think it is because they are successful. They demonstrate what happens when someone (Sam Walton) has a good idea and the perseverance to realize that idea. And I think that the media resents that such a large company can do so many good things for people. The result of this is more negative coverage which, in turn stirs up people into believing that Wal-mart is a "big, bad giant" that needs to be reined in. What they may not realize is that by punishing Wal-mart (or other similar service and goods companies) they are really punishing themselves, by giving themselves less choice and forcing them to pay more and thus have less money.

I'd love to hear your disagreements.