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Walmart and competition
Kmart strategy analysis
Walmart and competition
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KMART CORPORATION
FACTS-
Kmart was formed in the late 1950's to challenge new forms of discount stores. They are a descendant of an organization Sebastian S. Kresge. The average Kmart store is around 100,000 square feet. In 1987 Kmart was the largest discount retailer in the United States. They currently have 2,223 stores and last year they had over $25 billion in sales which is nearly double that of Wal-Mart. In 1991 they opened their Kmart superstores. The superstore is a 150,000 square feet and is expected to gross $40 to $50 million dollars in revenues. It will also remain open 24 hours a day.
SYMPTOMS-
One symptom is that Wal-Mart has lower prices than Kmart which makes them very hard to compete with. Kmart has to try to get out of the really urban areas so they can compete more realistically with Wal-Mart. They need to keep their appearance and service above par or this also will result in problems.
PROBLEMS-
Kmart's biggest problem is obviously the widespread of Wal-Mart all over the United States. They have to find a way to compete with Wal-Mart's regional distribution centers. These centers ensure the Wal-Mart customers that they are going to get the best product for the best price. Since Kmart does not have these centers they still need to pay all of the fees that deal with shipping and handling. Kmart needs to do something quick. In a recent survey 49% of people said that they would drive right past a Kmart to go to a Wal-Mart. The average Wal-Mart customer visits the store 32 times in a year, meanwhile the average Kmart customer only visits 15 times in a year. They have to be in financial trouble since they are getting pressure from vendors to pay their bills on time.
ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS
Kmart needs to find a certain area that they are better at then Wal-Mart. They are not going to be able to beat their prices so they have to provide better customer service. They have select a specialized department that they can dominate and at least take away a little of the business from Wal-Mart. For example develop a top of the line auto care station for tune ups, inspections, oil changes etc.
The founhder of the company, Godfrey Keebler, started with jus a small bakery in Philadelphia, PA in 1853. During the next two generations, local bakeries popped up around the country, including Strietmann, Hekman, Supreme and Bowman. With the introduction of cars and trucks (carrying the Keebler logo), bakery goods could be distributed beyond the neighborhood and regional distribution began.
Friedman in this article starts off by address that the recession of 2008 has quite a few people struggling from pay check to pay check. She uses this topic to go into how pay transparency has been implemented by the government and what has come of it. She also says that the Obama administration has been working to increase pay transparency. Her final point is that the point of pay transparency is to get managers to preform performance evaluations to base people’s salaries.
You cannot pretend that aspects of reality do not exist just because there is nowhere to put them in your ideological box. It does not matter whether your ideology is Nonviolence, or Marxism, or Free-Market Capitalism; reality will do what it wants to do. So let us examine some aspects of reality. The goal to keep in mind is the minimization of global violence (the total amount of violence against humans on earth. Preferably including economic violence and even threats of violence).
Kmart is a huge vintage company that had peeked at one time and now is
...ir employees without their knowledge at all. Because of their prices being low, wage is even lower to make an over decent profit. Wal-Mart is a growing competitor to those who have enough trouble just surviving. It is easier for everyone just to back-off and let them do what they want, but they have taken advantage of that and the people do not like that.
Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. (King, Jr., 1963)
Wal-Mart’s competitive environment is quite unique. Although Wal-Mart’s primary competition comes from general merchandise retailers, warehouse clubs and supermarket retailers also present competitive pressure. The discount retail industry is substantial in size and is constantly experiencing growth and change. The top competitors compete both nationally and internationally. There is extensive competition on pricing, location, store size, layout and environment, merchandise mix, technology and innovation, and overall image. The market is definitely characterized by economies of scale. Top retailers vertically integrate many functions, such as purchasing, manufacturing, advertising, and shipping. Large scale functions such as these give the top competitors a significant cost advantage over small-scale competition.
As revealed by the SWOT analysis earlier Kmart has potential to pull itself out of its current position of facing closure. In order to exploit opportunities and counter threats Kmart needs to build on these competencies to strengthen its position and counter internal weaknesses against the single largest industry threat - increased competition in a mature market.
Also, on the strategic side, there are issues of where stores are located. On the whole, Kmart stores did not seem to be sited as well as the stores of the competition. Then there was the issue of technology. While Wal-Mart was becoming the relentless efficiency engine that we know today by investing in technology and streamlining the supply chain, Kmart held back. As Wal-Mart developed an infrastructure that enabled it to lower prices, Kmart slipped into a price disadvantage.
Clearly social class plays a big role in the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, because all of the three marriages that Janie had were based on money. Then later the marriages had dramatic problems based on the amount of money they had. In Janie’s first two marriages, she didn’t love her husband but only used them to sustain her financially while she didn’t have to work. Her last marriage was the exception because Tea Cake would use her to fuel his gambling problem. If social class was taken out of this novel there would no longer be a plot, and the plot would have to be replaced by something
It has been debated though out history whether or not nonviolence “works”. Many societies, and this without question includes the United States, have mostly relied on violent tactics. Many people believe that violence is the only way to stop wars, even though it creates war, and people tend to believe that violence is the one solution to many global and political problems. However, recent literature and research is starting to prove otherwise. Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist, recently published a book, Why Civil Resistance Works in 2011. The research highlights data that shows throughout history, nonviolent tactics are more effective than violent ones in various ways.
From just one restaurant in San Bernadino, California, run by two brothers, McDonald’s has grown to become the best known and most popular fast food restaurant chain in the world.
Nonviolent protests such as Gandhi’s Indian independence movement (from Britain) have shown to be highly more effective than violent protest.一Even Though, Gandhi was assassinated, his movement was a success and his legacy lived on; he’s much like King in that way.一 In fact, two women, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan did a study on the effectiveness and success rates of nonviolent and violent protest in comparison to each other and wrote a book titled “Why Civil Resistance Works”. The book provides statistics that show that nonviolent protest are a lot more successful than violent protest. Chenoweth and Stephan analyze these statistics alongside results from case studies in different countries. Once they conclude that nonviolent protests are more effective, they proceed to analyze the reason why. They came to the deduced that one reason nonviolent protests are more successful is that more people feel inclined to participate in nonviolent protest because they are not risking their lives or obstructing their values. Another reason they believed nonviolent protests are more successful is that a government is less likely to retaliate against a nonviolent protest because they would lose international support based on conflict of morality. Also, a government overthrown sans violence is more likely to become democratic whereas a government overthrown
Overtime, a combination of poor customer service, messy stores, and lengthy checkout processes have led to the failure of the Kmart and Sears merger. One-time loyal customers, who routinely shopped at these stores, no longer felt appreciated or that the organization desired their business. Since they no longer felt important, customer chose to give their business to more deserving competitors such as Target.
...arket, they still attempt to improve their performance in other areas, by contributing to charity and hence improving their local reputation, however they have very low customer and employee satisfaction. These lowered performance indicators stem from low employee motivation. It would be very beneficial for Walmart to increase these performance factors as the small cost of improving employee’s conditions and motivation would be balanced by not having to re-hire 70% of their work force every year.