Business 313 Forum. Business & Marketing. Coursework

BUSINESS 313 FORUM
Name:
Institution:
Instructor’s Name:
Course Code:
Date:
GAP Inc.
GAP Inc is a clothing and accessories retailer headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company was founded in 1969 by Donald Fischer, and to this date, the Fischer’s family controls a sizable stake in the company. As of 2018, GAP operated a total of 3,666 stores worldwide and directly employed about 135,000 employees CITATION Lia19 \l 1033 (O'Connell, 2019).
Discuss how this has directly affected the American workforce.
GAP is a large employer around the world. However, a very small fraction of its employees is American. This is because most of the employees are from the countries where GAP manufactures its clothes, specifically, South East Asia. Though most of GAP consumers are from North America and Europe, there is no single factory in these continents. Only the store operators and administrative force in GAP’s headquarters in San Francisco California. The rest of the workforce is from most of the countries in South East Asia specifically, India, Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Pakistan.
GAP has impacted the American workforce by employing thousands of workers in its stores. As of 2018, there were 2388 stores in the United States alone CITATION GAP18 \l 1033 (GAP, 2018). Therefore, GAP is a big employer in the United States though compared to the job opportunities it creates in other countries, American workers are a drop in the ocean. Most of GAP’s employees are in the manufacturing companies in South East Asia, and they number over hundreds of thousands. Of GAP had its manufacturing in the US, the majority of these jobs would go to US citizens and the company would be one of the biggest employers in the country.
Applying concepts, you learned in the required readings, discuss who has benefited more from this practice: The United States, or the foreign country?
It is not easy to tell which country has benefitted more from GAP. However, from the face of it, the foreign countries to which GAP has outsourced its manufacturing to have benefitted more. Hundreds of thousands of GAP’s employees are overseas, especially in the aforementioned countries in South East Asia. Majority of GAP’s employees are in these countries and therefore, they are the major beneficiaries of GAP’s decisions to outsource production to them. Presence of GAP manufacturing factories in these countries also has a major ripple effect on the economy other than employing a large number of its citizens. Firstly, the country earns foreign exchange from transacting with GAP which is a multinational. Secondly, though GAP employs many of the country’s citizens in its...