Kentucky Dan takes issue with the JibJab parody of Wal-Mart. I'm inclined to agree. The parody falls well short of their best work which was even-handed, above all else. This piece, however, manages to recycle every tired cliche about the company's supposed ill effects while mentioning none of its positive ones. They could have done a lot better.

Wal-Mart Critics

The AFL-CIO, one of the nation's oldest and largest labor unions, is hiding some of its anti-Wal-Mart campaign behind a false-flag URL entitled "Walmartcostsyou.com". According to the union, we are all "Paying the Price at Wal-Mart". Problem is, the three reports that purport to show this are methodologically flawed and, most importantly, biased in favor of the union's pre-conceived notions. Call this anything but an objective assessment.

Meanwhile, pollster John Zogby jumps the shark. The speedboat that pulled him over the ramp was captained by none other than the anti-Wal-Mart group, WakeUpWalMart.com. According to Reuters:

The national poll -- commissioned by WakeUpWalMart.com, a union-funded group that has been pressuring Wal-Mart to raise employee wages and benefits -- surveyed 1,012 randomly chosen adults on their attitudes toward the world biggest retailer.

Respondents were asked to choose which of two statements more closely fit their personal opinions.
The majority, or 56 percent, picked: "I believe that Wal-Mart is bad for America. It may provide low prices, but these prices come with a high moral and economic cost for consumers." Thirty-nine percent agreed that "Wal-Mart is good for America. It provides low prices and saves consumers money every day."

Here are links to all of the answers in the survey and to the research methodology. Most telling is the distrubtion of responses to two questions, the first of which is:

In general, thinking back on what you have recently seen, heard or read about Wal-Mart 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?

The replies were as follows: Much more favorable (11%); Somewhat more favorable (11%); Somewhat less favorable (29%); Much less favorable (26%); and Not sure/Do not read (24%). Thus, 55% of the people hold less favorable opinions of Wal-Mart based on what they have seen or heard in the last few months.

The second question of interest is this one:

I am going to read to you a list of stores. Please tell me if your overall opinion of each is very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or a very unfavorable.

The two stores whose results are posted are Wal-Mart, naturally, and Target, Wal-Mart's principal US competitor. The differences are remarkable: 73% of respondents had a very or somewhat favorable view of Target, while only 58% did for Wal-Mart; similarly, only 13% had very or somewhat unfavorable views of Target while the number was 38% for Wal-Mart.

Although no historical data are reported, my guess is that these results would not have been observed a year ago. If they had, there would not have been much of a reason to undertake such a massive, coordinated, and sustained assault on Wal-Mart. From this premise I draw two tentative conclusions. First, I note that al though the charges made by the critics are having an impact on the public perception of the Wal-Mart, the discount merchandisers as a whole are apparently not being tarred by the same brush. This suggests that Wal-Mart's competitor's may stand to gain from having the firm suffer slings and arrows. By that I don't mean to imply that the competitiors are spear-heading the effort- far from it. What I do mean to say is that their silence suggests strongly that they are cheering from the sidelines. For reasons I'll outline in a future post, I think that this is a serious miscalculation on their part.

The second conclusion is that the anti-Wal-Mart sentiment is at or nearing its peak. I say this because several factors in the equation have limits, limits that work against the Wal-Mart critics. First of all, the resources Wal-Mart's critics are prepared to devote to this cause are both limited and much less than that available to the company. While the Wal-Mar critics do have the media to act as its force multiplier, there is also the ever-present competition for the attention of the average American news consumer. With each passing day the news about Wal-Mart's shortcomings become "old news" and it will be increasinlgly hard and more costly to get the public to pay attention to the story.

Finally, as we move into the holiday season, the appetite for such negative stories should decline, lest the critics look like grinches and scrooges. This should be especially true for stories about a store at which so many people will have shopped for gifts.

My prediction is that if the anti-Wal-mart campaign doesn't draw blood by the end of the year, that is to say, if it doesn't have some news that will garner at least one day of front-page, above-the-fold, headlines, the kind that can cause Wal-mart's stock price to drop and stay down for a few days or more, then the poll numbers will stop their decline and start to reverse their direction in early 2006, just around the time that the major bowl games and NFL playoffs are taking place. In short, without really bad news, nothing short of advertising during the Superbowl will gain the critics much attention between New Years and Valentine's Day. But even if the critics fail to achieve this, it won't signal the end of the battle between Wal-Mart and its critics. Rather, it will just signal the beginning of the next phase.

Also on this blog:

The Political Dimensions of the War on Wal-Mart and Five Forces Analysis of Wal-Mart and The Economic Impact of Wal-Mart and The Empire Strikes Back and the Wal-Mart Archive

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