Wal-Mart announced this week that they were planning on offering thousands of new products in their stores that will bear a “Made in the USA” label. Wal-Mart has, for many years, offered some of the lowest prices of any department store in the country, and they do this by sourcing a portion of their merchandise from overseas, especially from China. However, with the rise in popularity of buying American-made, along with the fact that 54% of Wal-Mart’s sales comes from products made in the US, the company has decided to begin a Made in America campaign. The campaign not only includes plans to stock their shelves with thousands of American products, but also to hire several thousand veterans in an attempt to create much-needed jobs in the US to help boost our economy.
Does this mean Wal-Mart will one day ditch their overseas products and become a 100% all American-made company? Likely no, at least not anytime soon. A lot of the higher-end items they sell, like electronics and kitchen appliances, are still sourced from overseas and help bring in nearly half of Wal-Mart’s sales. Yet their American product line may in fact be worth supporting. Buying American products from any store can help boost the economy in America. What’s important in the case of Wal-Mart is to also avoid buying things that come from overseas.
In the end, the only thing the department store really seems to be changing is its emphasis on certain items. Customers used to shop for those high-end electronics they could get cheaply at Wal-Mart, but now the majority of shoppers are buying household goods and health & beauty products from the store. The majority of these products come from the US, so Wal-Mart is really just trying to deliver to their customers what they purchase most, and what customers purchase the most just happens to be products that are made in the USA. What this really shows is that buying American products and avoiding foreign-made products causes stores like Wal-Mart to do two things. They will decrease the amount of foreign items on their shelves, and increase their variety of American products, if only to satisfy their American customers. What this means to us is that buying products made in the USA eventually does make a difference.
Here’s the CNN article with more about Wal-Mart’s campaign: http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/12/news/companies/walmart_selling_american_products_2/index.htm