Love-Hate Relationship With Successful Companies

There's no denying that Wal-Mart is a controversial company. Wal-Mart is the largest multinational retail corporation in the U.S. and in the world. Founded by Sam Walton, a child of a farmer and military vet, he open his first variety store at the age of 26 in 1945 and made $80,000 his first year in business. Now Wal-Mart has grown to run 8,900 stores worldwide with a net income of $15.7 billion. It is the most successful family-owned corporation.

What made Wal-Mart so successful is their ability to cut unnecessary cost while saving expense, their massive buying power, their smooth and strategic operation, their strong logistics and distribution network, and their excellent customer service. With the advancement of technology, they had the foresight to incorporate IT into their operation, investing in assets management software that significantly change their business for the better. Competitors soon follow to integrate other enterprise asset management tools, but Wal-Mart still have first-mover advantage which is why they remain the industry leader in retail.

With anything successful, there is often hate and controversies surrounding it. Supporters of Wal-Mart says it has provided many benefits to the economy as well as to society, while others disagree. Here we will look at the pros and cons of Wal-Mart presence in the world.

Pros:

• Provide large variety of cheap and affordable good and services as well as feature and promote American products and services.
• Provide many jobs to the residents in the area they're located as well as provide opportunity for some local residents to start at the ground level and work their way up in the Wal-Mart organization.
• Compensate its employees fairly as well as provide profit-sharing, incentives, health care and other benefits to its employees.
• Contributed to many charities, organization, and to the local community.
• Attract additional business and people to the community.

Cons:

• Allegedly engage in illegal price discrimination.
• Allegedly does not pay overtime to its employees.
• Allegedly prevent its employees from forming unions.
• Allegedly makes use of part-time and temporary workers which deprives the employees of benefits.
• Force suppliers to manufacture goods in third-world countries which lower the foreign workers' already-impoverished standard of living by competing with other suppliers to win and retain Wal-Mart's contract. Through this, employees have the lowest standard of living and pay as well as have the highest employer abuse, in the worst sanitary, social, working and educational condition.

Apple Inc., a multinational corporation that produce consumer electronics, software, and computers, is one of the most admired and successful company in the U.S. They are notable for their line of Mac laptops, iPhones, iPads, and iOS operating system. It has over 364 retail stores in 13 countries with an annual revenue of $180 billion. Although, Apple Inc. have a large cult following of die-hard loyal fans, it also have its share of controversies and widespread criticism. Here we look as the pros and cons of Apple Inc.

Pros:

• Revolutionized lifestyle in the world.
• Innovators of constructive electronics, software, and computers.
• Provide jobs with good pensions and benefits.
• Use recyclable and environmentally-friendly materials to produce their products.
• Made large charitable contributions to various organizations and communities.

Cons:

• Move America manufacturing to oversea countries like China.
• Continued its partnership with Foxconn, a manufacturing company in China, when number of employee suicides took place while producing the iPhone.
• Poor living condition for Foxconn's employees; filthy, smelly, cockroach-infested dormitories.
• Labor abuse at Foxconn for forcing student interns to work overtime at Foxconn making the iPhone 5.
• Produce non-recyclable hardware components and toxins within iPhone hardware.
• Accused of acting on a number of Antitrust laws and disingenuous litigations with competitors thus preventing further innovations, consumer choice, and competitions within the market.

Microsoft represents the other side of the coin when it comes to PC's and operating systems. They were the originators and by default the only operating system available for businesses and personal use. Their software has had a strangle hold on the technology world for decades and has revolutionized the business and academic sectors with Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. But because of the lac of sufficient competition over the years they have come under fire for having a Monopoly on the industry. Also because of their supreme reign over the software world there was a real big lac of innovation in their products. So where are they now?

Now Microsoft is starting to feel the pressure from Apple a bit more. Apple products are everywhere and with their user friendly ecosystem more and more people are beginning to purchase apple computers. In response to this, Microsoft has just recently released Windows 8, the newest operating system to date and by far the most innovative. They are also releasing the Microsoft Surface, a tablet that easily converts into a little laptop, in order to rival the iPad. No one know for sure how this battle will play out for both sides, but one thing is for sure. When any large company has little to no competition then the customers always loose. With competition comes better prices, new technology, and more innovative products and hopefully this is what we are going to start seeing from Microsoft.