The Business Ethics Blog

Under what circumstances should a company be legally forced to carry a particular product?

A recent story says that Wal-Mart stores in Massachusetts are going to be forced to carry the “morning after” contraceptive pill. Apparently state law in the state requires all pharmacies to dispense all “commonly prescribed medications.”

Here are some links to the story:
Wal-Mart Told To Stock Morning-After Pill (@ Forbes.com)
Mass. makes Wal-Mart sell morning-after pills (@ Chicago Sun-Times)
State: Wal-Mart must carry emergency contraception (@ CNN)

So, why should a given store be required to carry a particular product?

One reason might have to do with a particular store having a local monopoly or near-monopoly. If Wal-Mart’s pharmacy is the only pharmacy in (or near) your town, then a decision by Wal-Mart not to carry a particular drug means a serious limitation on consumers’ ability to acquire that drug.
But what about stores in big cities, where there are likely dozens of other pharmacies? Why be concerned then?

The answer, I think, has to do with the logic of collective action: Wal-Mart’s decision not to carry the pill might not be disastrous, but a proliferation of such decisions might be (at least from the point of view of the women who want/need access to it).
In a big city, no individual store’s decision not to carry a particular product is going to have any effect on the product’s availability (just as no individual’s decision not to pay her taxes is going to affect overall government revenues enough to endanger the provision of services, and no individual’s pollution is going to ruin the environment). An individual action in such cases is nearly without effect. But if one store, either because of management’s ethical or religious convictions or because of management’s fears about carrying a controversial product, refuses to carry that product, what’s to stop other stores from following their lead? And if all (or even just “many”) stores make the same decision, the net result (just like the result of rampant tax evastion, or wide-spread pollution) would be a serious problem.