Rhetorical Analysis on “The Wal-mart You Don’t Know”

Please read this article published by Charles Fishman before you dig into my rhetorical analysis of his Article.


http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

Here is my analysis to the article.

Charles Fishman, a senior staff of Fast Company, published the article “The Wal-mart You Don’t Know” on 1st December 2003. This article has received the Best Business Magazine Story of 2004 award from the New York Press Club (Fishman 532). As specified in the website for Fast Company, they cater to an audience whose median age is at 45.6 years with an average house hold income at around $162,825. Also the male to female ratio is at 65%to 35%, with most of the readers being key decision makers in the industry ("Audience/Print"). This indicates that the primary audiences for this article were mostly high end business personals from various industries. The article discusses how Wal-Mart uses its sheer buying power to dictate terms to their vendors, in a way pressurizing them and thus affecting their survivability and impacting the economy of the USA as a whole. The article is best summarized by the thesis sentence which states that “it’s the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole” (533). By using cause and effect rhetorical strategy the author in his article provides a persuasive argument about Wal-mart’s imposing ways of performing business with other organizations and its overall impact to economy.

Fishman brings out the interaction between Wal-mart and its suppliers. The introduction of the article starts with story of Vlasic’s one gallon jar of pickle at a price of $2.97. Vlasic in order to increase their sales numbers agreed to Wal-Mart’s pricing for one gallon jar of pickles. Even though the profit margin at that pricing level was too low, the larger sales numbers from Wal-Mart formed the incentive for that business decision. However, Fishman specifies that accordingly to Steve Young, a former vice president of grocery marketing at Vlasic, the one gallon jar of pickle deal with Wal-Mart “accounted for 30% of Vlasic’s business. But the company’s profits from pickles had shriveled 25% or more” (535). Fishman delves further into the relationship of Wal-Mart and the organizations that it does business with by narrating the story of Huffy the bicycle manufacturing company. According to John Mariotti who was the president of Huffy Bicycle Co., one time in order to meet the delivery demands with Wal-Mart, Mariotti “gave the designs for four of his higher-end, higher margin products to rival manufacturers” (537). Thus Fishman emphasizes that fierce standards laid out by Wal-Mart has resulted in Huffy’s shut down of their manufacturing unit in 1999 (537). Fishman elaborates on similar stories of other business organizations like Lovable Company, the bra and lingerie manufacturer, MasterBrand industries who were the manufacturers of Master Locks and Levi Strauss the clothing manufacturer. In each of these cases the companies, after conducting business with Wal-Mart had, to counter the stiff competition from Chinese, Mexican and Taiwanese manufacturers which led closing of their manufacturing units in the USA (537-541). On a positive note, Fishman credits Wal-Mart for invoking a sense of discipline and commitment to delivery in all the firms that does business with them. Fishman finally concludes that the consumer that shops for cheaper price is responsible for the jobs leaving the USA (541).

Clearly in this article, Fishman provides a persuasive argument about how Wal-Mart as a corporation is responsible for closure of several manufacturing units in the USA and thus affecting the economy as a whole. The argument’s strength is based on several accounts of business heads explanations of what pursued after their liaison with Wal-Mart. Fishman has clearly followed a cause and effect analysis to bring out this relationship and its eventual impact to the manufacturing sector. Right from the beginning of the article with the story of Vlasic’s one gallon jar of pickles, Fishman explains that each organization, driven by the anticipation of high sales number from Wal-Mart align themselves to meet their delivery standards. These changes in the end result in loss of profitability due to aggressive pricing and finally closure of their manufacturing plants in the USA. Thus for every story in the article, Fishman guides the readers through a simple order of how each of the client organizations partners with Wal-Mart to its eventual complex or ironical conclusion that is their downfall or shutdown of manufacturing units in the USA.

Charles Fishman has targeted his article for the more educated business class community with higher educational level and better understanding of business structures. This is clearly reflected in statistical numbers with regards to prices and sales figures being used throughout the article. Also the tone of the writer seems expository and more business oriented. There is a tinge of ironic sarcasm embedded in the article, since every story begins with a positive outlook and ends with a calamitous result.

Throughout the article, Fishman has reached out to former business leaders that had worked with Wal-Mart to get their opinions and views about what transpired between Wal-Mart and their organizations. All the narrations are quoted in-text to bring out the unbiased nature of the article. This demonstrates a higher degree of ethos for Charles Fishman. However, some readers would be interested to know Wal-Mart’s perspective for each of the events explained in the article.

The article “The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know” is an eye opener for most of the American society that heavily indulges in consumerism. The constant pressure imparted by consumers to seek the cheapest products has led to the destruction of manufacturing units in the USA. Charles Fishman has not presented Wal-Mart’s point of view for each of the stories. But he has convincingly persuaded us to accept the negative impact of Wal-Mart’s quest to drive prices lower. This article opens up a serious debate on how far the American consumers can push their retailer to seek cheaper prices which eventually would lead to their job losses.

Works Cited

"Audience / Print." FAST COMPANY :: Progressive | Creative | Innovative. Web. 08 May 2011. .

Fishman Charles. “The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know.” Perspectives on Contemporary Issues: Readings Across the Disciplines. By Katherine Anne Ackley. 5th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2009.532-541.