On August 21, 2006, Wal Mart
announced an alliance with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce,
and organization that actively advocates gay marriage. (
Here and
Here)
As a retailer, Wal-Mart has
the goal of making money, not being a political voice, yet by taking such
action the company has politicized itself, thus alienating a major chunk of its
customers, and as a result, boycott calls have been made on popular radio talk
shows and emails are now circulating the Internet.
Boycott Watch's primary mission it so get to the
facts, so we do confirm that the underlying reasons for the boycott calls are
accurate, as documented in the press releases above. What we do not understand,
however, is why Wal-Mart entered into such an agreement when they just got over
a problem (Here)
regarding the Catholic League and Wal-Mart associates not only not saying
"Merry Christmas", but lecturing Catholics about the origins of Christmas. It
took Wal-Mart a few attempts to settle that boycott, which they did quickly.
We at Boycott Watch would have thought Wal-Mart would
have learned a public relations lesson from that debacle, not to mention other
problems companies such as Ford (Here) have faced after
making alliances with gay organizations. Regardless of Political Correctness,
consumers generally react negatively to business alliances with political
organizations. Some of these alliances have resulted in boycotts and the best
way to avoid such boycotts is therefore simply not to engage in such alliances.
Boycott Watch previously reported how Ford (Here) put itself in a
no-win situation with advertising in gay publications, and their stock has
suffered recently, quite possibly because they upset homosexuals with their
normal ad rotations, yet many in the homosexual community felt that once Ford
placed ads in their publications, they were somehow owed the ads. One the ads
were removed, Ford faced retribution by both gay and religious groups.
Wal-Mart obviously did not do their research and
stepped into the same mess Ford made for itself. Now, no matter what Wal-Mart
does, their sales will suffer. This should be a lesson for businesses -
concentrate on sales and not politics, as no business can successfully do both.
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