Scandals in Wal-Mart
In Brandweek this week, there's an article about the scandal in Wal-Mart. The summary of the story is that the top marketing executive of the company, Julie Roehm violated the ethics policy of Wal-Mart by receiving free drinks and dinner from one of Wal-Mart's supplier, Draft. According to the article, Roehm was also caught sitting in the laps of two Draft's male guests. The key issue here is not only about Roehm breaking the company's ethic policies, she is the marketing personal who is working on moving Wal-Mart to an upscale image shop. Therefore, what will Wal-Mart do next will definitely affect its brand image. Should Wal-Mart continue hiring her even though she broke the ethic policies? Or should Wal-Mart let her go and give up on the moving upscale image strategy?
Personally, I think that due to the majority of conservative consumers Wal-Mart has, no matter the company fires Roehm or not, it will have negative effect on the company image.
by Alice Lee
posted by Brand007 @ 8:38 PM
2 Comments:
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don't think this will hurt Wal-Mart that much, as they sacked her to prevent more attention grabbing behaviour, and the situation will soon be forgotten depending on how Julie Roehm promotes the situation. It looks like she will benefit from teh whole situation as it has given her additional publicity and boosted the word of mouth about who she is and what sho does. If she takes a new job and lets the matter rest, nothing more will happen, however, if she starts blaming Wal-Mart for anal behaviour and exaggerated accuasations, I think the matter is going to take a differnt direction for the Wal-Mart brand.
/christina Fahrenholtz
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