(Soni, 2015)“With the power and success that the company is able to harbor its fellow companies like Kroger, K-mart, and Target don 't even stand a chance. This places Walmart in the driver seat in their market and places direct pressure on their weaker competitors. The success of Walmart eventually will be so overbearing that it will start to push other competitors completely out of business. Strategic Considerations and Recommendations With the expansion into smaller communities, Walmart will be able to provide low cost products to its consumer as well at take out new competition that until now did not exist on their radar. By implementing this low cost strategy into the communities Walmart will not only attract new customers, but will also draw previous customers who will enjoy their new community based market.
Chain stores have been around for years and have been growing in popularity and have been improving the economy. However consumers of smaller stores are claiming that bigger chain stores are ruining the appeal of America and its streets. Even though it may be claimed that chain stores are ruining America; chain stores are not ruining America because the stores make money to fund the fixing and building of roads and provides products to all types of consumers. Giant chain stores are ruining America, because they kill off smaller businesses that help the community. “Smaller shops provide as much valuable services and products as supermarkets” (Owen).
Sam Walton started with just a few small variety stores, funded with borrowed money. His goal was to provide affordable products to the public to make life easier. After his success with the first few stores, Sam Walton borrowed more money to build more stores, creating the Wal-Mart empire as we see it today. The retail giant proves its stoic presence in our lives with its $401 billion sales for fiscal year 2009. The success of Wal-Mart is so great, that many people believe that Wal-Mart is becoming a monopsony .
Walmart’s are located almost in every town and all over every city in America. Walmart slogan is “Save people money so they can live better” and has currently found new ways to better the company such as “Walmart to go” online shopping. Competitors of Walmart suffer because of Walmart low prices and the fact that have formed a sense of genius. Walmart popularity has impacted the economy in a huge way in positive and a negative way. Walmart has a lot of criticism from many different parties about how the company is ran and the fact that Walmart does not have a union.
At first glance, Wal-Mart's "rollback" pricing scheme seems appealing however, while the strategy drew in some shoppers with lower prices on select items, it was combined with a rise in prices on many other goods. This is severely aggravating for all customers who embraced Wal-Mart for its "everyday" low prices on all merchandise. This is a prime example of how this massive retailer deceives its customers into shopping at Wal-Mart (Lake, Mermin, and Wiefek 10). The following is an interesting quote from Scott Edwards, a former Wal-Mart executive. This quote is significant because a former vice president of the massive store blatantly admitted to raising prices and alienating the blue-collar customer.
The other side argues that Wal-Mart only became successful by killing off all their competition with their low prices. The only thing that matters to those that like the company is that they save consumers money through their low prices, but you cannot tell this to all the owners of smaller stores that Wal-Mart has put out of business, such as Gary E. Hawkins. The CEO of a family-owned supermarket in New York, he said "It will be a sad day in this country if we wake up one morning and all we find is a Wal-Mart on every corner." This is obviously a conflict of different interests, and it is unclear as to whether Wal-Mart is beneficial or harmful to the economy. Wal-Mart grew to its enormous size mainly because of the low prices it offers its consumers, which seems to be an obvious benefit to the economy.
Although competing against Walmart makes it far more difficult for smaller retail stores, the good that Walmart does for this nation far outweighs the bad. So what role will Wa... ... middle of paper ... ...ny is perfect, opening a Walmart in a city does have one downfall. Walmart tends to run smaller retail stores out of business. This happens because smaller, family owned stores can’t compete with the fierce competition of having a Walmart in the same city. Walmart sells everything, and is known across the world for having hot deals and low prices.
The opposing side believe that local businesses are suffering due to “big box stores” and not being able to give as big of discounts or have as big of a selection of products. “People say, ‘Well, you lost your little stores,’ and that’s true. But it’s money-driven...if its $5 cheaper at one of the larger stores, we take advantage of it. I guess that’s human nature.” Carl R. Baldus Jr. Big box stores are not bad, people just need to remember the local businesses need their support in order to keep helping the community these local owners are what builds strong communities so if you’re saving money buying from big box stores make sure to give back to your local businesses by spending it doing something fun locally. Even though people believe that local businesses are not as beneficial as a big box store, buying locally not only benefits the business but also the community, buying locally builds a strong community and the money you spend at a local business gets put back into the community.
This is helpful due to the fact that not everything can be located in one place, but can be accessed just as easily. Online shopping can also be done at the leisure of a shopper and at any convenience as long as the website is up and running. While shopping online many websites like Future Shop, Best Buy and Home Depot have sections on the website that allow for ratings and reviews of products. This helps online shoppers as it shows their experience with the product and future influence the shopper to buy or to focus on a different product. Online consumers also have the option of receiving new information on products through emails sent by various websites to past visitors or people who have registered with them.
Online shopping scams are more highly to occur than those done face to face. Online shopping scams involve scammers pretending to be real online sellers with either a fake website or a fake ad. They may be selling a well-known product for a ridiculously low price and insist on immediate payment of the product. Like for example, there have been times where people have claimed they were selling designer bags like, Vintage Gucci, and marked them for half their price. In this certain situation, most people know that the bags are fake but others will purchase this item and get ripped off because they didn’t know any better.