Short business report: Plan for a consequentialist analysis

Write a short business report with the title: $$GVB: Plan for a consequentialist analysis $$ draft $1.$ In your report: In the past eighteen months, Norwegian shoppers have been hit hard by relatively high levels of

consumer price inflation. Inflation on basic commodities and clothing has been unusually high and

this has hit the poorest families hardest because a greater proportion of these households$$ income is

spent on $$the basics.$$

One clothing chain that operates in all significant towns of Norway has been particularly successful

thanks to a brand of clothing which it markets as $$Great Value Basics$($GVB$).$ Clothing items under

the GVB label have been selling well to large families. As the name suggests, the GVB range offers

all of the everyday items of clothing in good quality natural fibres, but at a consistently lower price

than other brands. In the five years since the label was launched, sales have grown exponentially

and have increased even faster in the last eighteen months as Norwegian consumers have grown

more price$-$conscious.

Yesterday morning, however, the broadcasting of an investigative journalism programme $$The

World on Sunday,$$ revealed to Norwegians that behind the GVB brand, there is a supply chain

containing several ethically problematic challenges:

$$ Clothes that are labelled as having been made in the EU have, in fact, been made in

Vietnam, and their original country of production has been concealed from the GVB$-$team

by the EU$-$based importer.

$$ Working conditions in factories that have been investigated are, by Norwegian standards,

very poor.

$$ Children as young as $10$ have been found working in some factories.

$$ Cotton labelled as $$organic$$ has been cultivated with high levels of herbicides and

insecticides.

$$ The cotton farms have treated their workers badly.

The social$-$media firestorm that has developed around the label over the past $24$ hours has had two

main and opposing discourses:

$1.$ The first narrative was focused on the social and environmental costs that have been

concealed behind the label and, consequently, a lot of negative attention aimed at the chain

store. This narrative is calling for the immediate end of the GVB label.

$2.$ But quite quickly, an alternative narrative developed on social media which pointed out the

very positive effects that the label had delivered to hard$-$pressed families in Norway. This

narrative was further strengthened when several bloggers from Vietnam picked up on the

Norwegian social media and claimed that working conditions were actually quite good, by

Vietnamese standards. This narrative argues that the GVB label should be continued, for the

benefit of both Norwegian consumers and the stakeholders in the supply chain that benefit

from it$.$

By late Sunday evening, the Norwegian chain store has found itself in the middle of an ethical

social$-$media storm in which the wind is blowing hard in two different directions...