WalMart

While Kmart was taking time to recover from filing Chapter 11, its rivals like Wal-Mart and Target were stealing its customers. When Kmart was focusing on random in-store discounts, Wal-Mart and Target were pitching low prices, broad inventories, hip products, and a pleasant shopping experience (2002). Jalexson states that in 2003 Edward Lambert rescued Kmart from bankruptcy. Lambert wanted to attract customer’s back, but the closing of 28% of Kmarts over the last two years hurts the chains ability to attract customers and forced the remaining stores to pay a higher portion of advertising costs. Then, in January of 2003 CEO Julian Day said that when a company exits bankruptcy it should emphasize the exclusive brands like; Joe Boxer, Sesame Street and of course Martha Stewart (2003).

The sales and profit of Circuit City in appliance market decreased because of the increasing competition from discount retailers, such as Sears, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot. With development for so many years, the stores had been out of fashion. Its brand image was not attractive and distinctive to customers as before. Data Analysis The problems existed in Circuit City... ... middle of paper ... ...is way, the company could reduce costs from staff, inventory and others. Third, the company should fully know the taste and preference of consumers and change its full-service model to self-service model or other more effective model.

No longer can they copy larger companies like Sears and J.C. Penny’s because of their size and scope. The fact is, Wal*Mart is bigger than these companies and their direct competitors Kmart and Target are doing everything in their power to close that gap. They are lurking not so quietly in the shadows, benefiting from Wal*Mart’s past choices, successes, and failures. They are there to blow the whistle if Wal*Mart steps outside the lines. Wal*Mart may be growing, but at a rate under 10% for the first time in years.

Wal-Mart’s target was to improve its international presence following three strategies: i) expanding into new markets with multiple formats, ii) opening new stores in existing markets and iii) rising sales at existing international stores (Kamboj, Kalia & Karla, 2011) . Although, Wal-Mart’s ventures achieved to be distinctive in countries that are close to the USA market such as Canada and Mexico, they had poor financial performance in the Asian and European countries. More specifically, in the late 1990s, Wal-Mart expanded into the South Korean and the German markets but it failed in both of them and exited quickly

One of Home Depot’s largest marketing problems through the course of their industry life-cycle is their differentiation strategy from their competitors. In a mature life-cycle, it’s hard for companies to be innovative. The issues though are that Home Depot has been following Lowe’s lead in change and innovation, but what Home Depot claims as their differentiation strategy isn’t really that different from their largest competitor, Home Depot’s CEO from 2000-2007, the slumping of the housing market, homogenous products, and their high market concentration. Home Depot is one of the biggest players in the home improvement market. Lowe’s follows right behind them.

This was caused by increased market saturation and slowing growth rates. Between 1995 and 1996 the growth rates were the lowest they had been in the past twenty years. The main reason for this was the vast number of grocery stores that had been built in growth stage and the emergence of new grocery retail formats such as warehouse clubs and dollar stores. This increased competition forced firms to compete with each other for the same customers by lowering prices. Enter WalMart.

These larger competitors maintain extensive advertising budgets, which are being used to increase their respective market shares in the hand sanitizer industry. Although GOJO’s Purell brand remains the market leader, its share of the market has fallen to 39.4 percent from its initial market domination of 100 percent. (FT1) Therefore, to increase its sales revenues, GOJO needs to introduce Purell internationally. India ... ... middle of paper ... ...rs. Political pressure for protectionism remains, and moves to cut more sensitive tariffs have been halted.

Describe the nature of the industry in which Wal-Mart competes The discount retailing industry, in which Wal-Mart competes, suffered slower growth in industry sales and in new store increases by reaching maturity. This resulted in a shakeout that has left the industry very concentrated. These trends are likely to continue due to intensified competition driven by companies seeking to expand market share by gaining efficiencis and economies of scale in distribution and purchasing. Indeed, in 1993 the top 5 discounters accounted for over 70% of total industry sales. Consequently, barriers to entry are high.

In the ‘90s retail businesses became more consolidated. Stores became bigger and more well-known; some local businesses were forced to leave the business. There were retailers that had the biggest market share. Walmart and Target became the monsters of the discount industry, Home Depot and Lowe’s took the home-improvement business, CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid operated in drugstore industry. Huge variety of big stores boosted people’s willingness to buy more products.

And while Wal-Mart was able to squeeze more value out of its stores and its systems, Kmart lost ground. By the time Kmart had finally decided to start devoting more resources to IT, it was so far behind Wal-Mart that catching up would have been a near-impossible task without the recession in the early part of this decade. With the effects of the recession taken into account, Kmart instead was consigned to also-ran status among discount retailers. Another problem was that Kmart did not correctly anticipate customer needs. For instance, let's say that Kmart buys a new style of shirt and stocks it in pink, yellow, green and blue.