Primark Evaluation and Conclusion

Primark as a company has both ethical and unethical parts in their organisation. The ethical parts of the business is that they are quite environmentally friendly, this is because they have invested a substantial amount of money on being energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Evidence of this is that they have recycled 23 million hangars and have created green stores which use building management systems to control their energy consumption and make sure that they are not using too much energy by managing temperature and lighting levels which reduces the amount of energy Primark use leading to their carbon footprint and effect on the earth decreasing. Another piece of evidence is that Primark are making their carrier bags using only their used cardboard which is generated in the Primark stores and the factories. This gives them good ethics because they are helping the environment as they are not using non renewable sources that much any more which leads to them operating much more sustainably allowing the non renewable sources to run out slower. Also Primark have reduced their road use by 160,525 miles which reduces the amount of air and noise pollution Primark generate which leads to the ozone layer not being damaged as much which reduces the amount of global warming and acid rain.

However, there are also functions of the company that have bad ethics as they have factories in Third world countries which have child labour who are working for 60 pence a day and the factories have very bad working conditions this has been backed up by the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh as if it had good working conditions it would have not collapsed. This shows that Primark do not care about the welfare of their workers and will not improve their working conditions as it will increase the costs of the business meaning their profit margin will narrow and may mean that they will have to increase the prices of their clothing in order to cover the costs which may displease customers making them become unloyal and shop at a rival which will lead to the revenue and profit of Primark decreasing. However, to improve their ethics they should use their generated profit to improve the factory's working condition and the workers welfare e.g. increased pay which also has the opportunity of increasing the profit of the company as good ethics will act as a unique selling point which will attract more customers to the Primark stores leading to increased profit to cover the extra costs.

Overall, I believe Primark is a company that has bad ethics, this is due to their mistreatment of child labour and their workers health and working conditions which shows they do not care about their employees unless they are not doing their job and Primark is not making the maximum potential profit they can. This backs up the statement that Primark has a bigger focus on making their maximum revenue and profit and getting and retaining a large base of loyal customers than on their ethical matters which displays that Primark is unethical.