Tool Mart Inc

Are Wal-Mart's prices the lowest?

Wal-Mart’s international advertising campaign claims the chain offers “every day low prices.” Next week, the Costa Rica Economy Ministry (MEIC) is going to make them prove it.

In May, MEIC staff investigated the legitimacy of Wal-Mart’s marketing slogan, which was unveiled in Costa Rica in late April as part of the company’s expanded operations in Central America and Mexico. After visiting several Walmart stores in Costa Rica, the MEIC report found pricing and information discrepancies to be “confusing” and potentially misleading for consumers.

“Advertising is a tool to promote consumerism and it must be delivered clearly and sufficiently. It is established by law that all advertising must be truthful,” Kattia Chávez, interim director of MEIC told The Tico Times this week. “Certain aspects of the ‘every day low prices’ campaign do not provide consumers with adequate information and could thus be misleading.”

According to the MEIC, Wal-Mart didn’t inform customers which products are discounted. While the company advertises that several thousand products are sold at lower prices, it doesn’t provide customers a list of which ones.

“Wal-Mart said that they lowered prices on 4,000 to 5,000 products, but consumers have no certainty that the products they are buying are the ones that have every day low prices,” Chávez said. “The consumer doesn’t have access to the list of those prices, so we’ve asked Wal-Mart to make the list available.”

MEIC also found that Wal-Mart doesn’t provide consumers with the amount of discounts for items included in the marketing campaign. While many prices are labeled as reduced, no information is given that indicates the difference between original and marked-down prices.  

MEIC has issued Wal-Mart a July 29 deadline to respond to its findings. Also, if MEIC determines that the company has deceived or misled consumers, Wal-Mart could be subject to fines and would be asked to discontinue the campaign. The MEIC has the authority to take those aggressive actions under Article 34 of the Promotion of Competition and Effective Consumer Defense Law.

In a statement, Yolanda Fernández, Wal-Mart’s regional manager of corporate affairs, said that, “At this time, we are reviewing the observations of MEIC and intend to take the necessary actions to respond to the commentary they offered. … We are a business that exists due to the support of our customers and since the beginning we have been more than willing to provide them with clear and precise information so that they benefit from our program of everyday low prices.

Afterschool: A High School Dropout Prevention Tool - America's ...

Over one million students who enter ninth grade each year fail to graduate with their peers four years later because they drop out of school. Seven thousand students drop out of school every day, and each year roughly 1.2 million students fail to graduate from high school. More than half of these students are from minority groups. Afterschool programs are a proven way to address the issues and risk factors that lead to dropout and provide a path to graduation and beyond. Download This Resource: Afterschool: A High School Dropout Prevention Tool (77.

National tollfree directory

Hardware age

Network World

Network World

Network World