Is Wal-Mart rethinking its business approach?
Thursday is a busy day for Wal-Mart. The retail giant is playing host to this year’s U.S. Manufacturing Summit in Denver, and the company reports its second quarter earnings. Between slower store traffic and dwindling sales, analysts aren’t optimistic. But the company has a plan.
When you think of social responsibility in the corporate world, Wal-Mart is not the first company that comes to mind. The company is working on initiatives from cutting the amount of water in detergent to partnering with women-owned businesses.
“I think certainly PR’s gotta be part of it, right? I mean, I don’t think it’s all altruism,” says Peter Mueller, an analyst at Forrester Research. “So if they pull it off, it will look good for them, right?”
And after years of bad press over employee relations, that could be a smart move, says Steven Brown, who teaches marketing at the University of Houston.
“It’s kind of in tune with the zeitgeist in corporate America where corporations increasingly realize that their employees need to identify with a good employer who does good for them as employees and also for their community at large,” Brown says.
The challenge, he says, is doing good while continuing to make a profit. And, Brown says, getting the skeptics to buy it.
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