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Walmart was found in 1962 by Sam Walton when he opened the first store in Arkansas. His main goal was to provide products to consumers at the lowest prices possible. This strategy was embedded in the company’s mission statement “we save people money so they can live better. Walmart operates using this strategy. Over the years, it has worked to their advantage. Walmart’s strategy of locating themselves in small towns than in condensed urban areas was one of the first ways it had a competitive edge over its competitors when it initially started. Realizing that people were willing to go an extra mile for what they considered a bang for their buck, was a strategy that got Walmart to the Fortune 500 ranking as America’s largest companies in 2002. As at today they are number 2 on Fortune 100. Walmart has relationships with consumers in order to ensure that the get the best quality of goods for the lowest possible price. Due to Walmart’s high share in the market, this has been made possible. Most suppliers readily alter their product so as to be able to sell to Walmart at a lower rate. Suppliers of Walmart know that a good relationship with Walmart will ensure that a large percentage of their earnings are not lost. Walmart is able to maintain the number one position in the industry by owning their supply chain processes. Walmart has in place a large number of warehouses and advanced technology in order to reduce costs by eliminating the middlemen. Walmart also prides itself on great customer service. For example, on entering a Walmart store, one would be immediately greeted at the door by a staff with a smile. It is such strategies as this that are over looked by Walmart’s competition that Walmart uses to stay...
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...fish and other seafood, Wal-Mart stores in this country started to display uncovered meat and installed fish tanks so that Chinese may sea and chose their favorites. This approach is very advantageous as it helps in ensuring that even the most local people are reached and served. Under this business strategy, Wal-Mart is able to respond to national operational, market requirements, flexibilities, and product qualities in order to satisfy customers of different countries differently. This approach has assisted Wal-Mart to get a lot of profits especially bearing in mind that governments of different countries are different. On this basis, customers from different countries are served differently according to their likes. This approach requires a lot of marketing research in order to make sure that cultural factors of citizens of a country are thoroughly researched.
Wal-mart is currently the world’s largest company. It has seen continuous growth and financial success since it was founded in 1962. Today it is living off of a previous reputation of solid ethical business practices that are no longer being exercised. Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-mart, was considered to be “freakishly cheap… Cost-cutting was an obsession in the Wal-mart culture… on business trips, everyone, including the boss, flew coach, and hotel rooms were always shared.” (reclaimdemocracy.org. 2006). This was only part of the reason for Sam Walton’s success.
Wal-Mart as we know it today evolved from Sam Walton’s goals for great value and great customer service. Mr. Walton’s competitors thought his idea that a successful business could be built around offering lower prices and great service would never work. Mr. Walton also credited the rapid growth of Wal-Mart not just to the low costs that attracted his customers, but also to his associates. He relied on them to give customers the great shopping experience that would keep them coming back. Sam shared his vision for the company with associates in a way that was nearly unheard of in the industry. He made them partners in the success of the company, and firmly believed that this partnership was what made Walmart great.
Wal-Mart has a competitive advantage that helps set them apart from the others. They operate under economies of scale. Competition has a hard time matching superstores on price because they typical lack volume to negotiate better deals With the development of its own distribution center and scale of operations, Wal-Mart is able to order in larger quantity at lower prices and passed on the savings to its customers. This generates store traffic and supports a one-stop shopping experience.
Wal-Mart has branded stores in all 50 states and in over 27 countries. Wal-Mart started with humble roots in 1962 by Sam Walton in the small town of Bentonville, Arkansas. Within thirty years, the small local discount retailer grew to one of the largest retail companies in the United States of America. Now it stands as the largest retailer in the world. As the largest retailer, Wal-Mart has gained many detractors. In "The Case for Wal-Mart," Karen De Coster and Brad Edmonds recognize how people “like to attack bigness” (632). Many believe Wal-Mart offers low wage jobs with few employee benefits, discriminates against women, and among many other issues, doesn’t give back to the community (631). In contrast to the constant barrage negative attacks, Wal-Mart proves beneficial to the community. Wal-Mart prides itself on being an equal opportunity employer to such a degree it has the most diverse group of employees anyone can imagine. Most Wal-Mart stores are the anchor that provides a steady stream of consumers to other much small businesses in the area. Beyond providing quality jobs for the people in and around the store, Wal-Mart brings convenience, lower prices, and help to those in need.
This is a good question. Walmart started as a small five and dime in the city of Bentonville, Arkansas by a man named Sam Walton. After a great success Sam and his wife Helen moved to Rogers, Arkansas where he opened his very first Walmart. He had some retailing experience after his time in the war and he chose Bentonville for the hunting season and because his wife wanted to live in a small town. His ideas of not pocketing extra cash from manufacturers, but rather giving deals to customers and trying to make profit off of how much he sold, changed the way retailers make money in America. Sam had a cheap mindset, not only for his customers, but for himself. Even when he became the richest man in America he continued to get his hair done for
There are several key competitive edges that keep Wal-Mart successfully maintaining its leading position in the industry. First of all, Wal-Mart’ multiple store formats allows Wal-Mart to extend their customer base. Since Wal-Mart opened its first store in Rogers, Arkansas, July 2 1962, it has extended its store number from 9 stores to a total 4,906 throughout the four types of store: (Discount stores, Supercenters, Sam’s club, and neighborhood markets) Wal-Mart is able to embrace more customers to fulfill all kinds of demand such as live supplies, groceries, pharmaceuticals, and entertainments. As a result, Wal-Mart’s sales and profit increase significantly. Backward expansion strategy is another key for its success. Unlike other retail stores, Wal-Mart opens its stores in small town first before entering into metropolitan area.
“Our competitors are better because Wal-Mart exists” stated by the chief financial officer of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is a retail store, which provides groceries, electronics, household appliances, and high quality items to consumers. The retail chain has made a household name within every house by selling products all over the world at a bargain price. Wal-Mart’s strength and pace of growth contributed to a retail store in every city and state across America. Wal-Mart is a powerful conglomerate, which contributes to businesses and people on a global scale through supporting the economy, creating jobs, and bettering the lives of millions.
In 1945, Sam Walton opened his first variety store and in 1962, he opened his first Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers, Arkansas. Now, Wal-Mart is expected to exceed “$200 billion a year in sales by 2002 (with current figures of) more than 100 million shoppers a week…(and as of 1999) it became the first (private-sector) company in the world to have more than one million employees.” Why? One reason is that Wal-Mart has continued “to lead the way in adopting cutting-edge technology to track how people shop, and to buy and deliver goods more efficiently and cheaply than any other rival.” Many examples exist throughout Wal-Mart’s history including its use of networks, satellite communication, UPC/barcode adoption and more. Much of the technology that was utilized helped Sam Walton more efficiently track what he originally noted on yellow legal pads. From the very beginning, he wanted to know what the customers purchased, what inventory was selling and what stock was not selling. Wal-Mart now “tracks on an almost instantaneous basis the ordering, shipment, and delivery of literally every item it sells, and that it requires its suppliers to hook into the system, enabling it to track most goods every step of the way from the time they’re made and packaged in the factories to when they’re carried out store doors by shoppers.” “Wal-Mart operates the world’s most powerful corporate computing system, with a capacity (as of late 1999) of more than 100 terabytes of data (A terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, or roughly the equivalent of 250 million pages of text.).
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.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is in the discount, variety stores industry. It was founded in 1945, Bentonville in Arkansas which is also the headquarters of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart operates locally as well as worldwide. It operated 1209 discount stores, 1980 super centers, and 567 Sam’s Club by January 31, 2006. It has also extended its operations to many international countries. It runs its retail stores in two forms: Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart Stores. The Sam’s Club sells assorted product lines such as hardwares, electronics, jewelry, and to mention a few. The Wal-Mart stores also offer similar products in addition to the following: health and beauty products, apparel for women, men and children, household appliances etc (www.yahoo.finance.com). The Vision Statement, Mission Statement, Values and Code of Conduct, Corporate Governance: Directors, Executive Management, Committees and Stakeholder will be the key elements that will discussed in this report as it relates to Wal-Mart. In addition to that, the major trends in the general/macro environment and industry will be analyzed.
The first Wal-Mart store opened in July of 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas by Sam Walton who believed that the future of retailing was in discounting and to avoid competing with established giants like Sears and Woolworth, Wal-Mart’s stated out of the large cities in the beginning and this strategy help avoid competition, while in rural areas Wal-Mart began growing their customer base by offering ways to save money and shorter travel distance, Sam Walton felt the best way to make customers happy was to provide the low prices every day (Farhoomand, 2006). The company needed to continually find ways to control the operating costs so the savings would then be passed on to Wal-Mart customers in the form of lower prices than the competitors. Walton was opposed to having any kind of employee unions for its company and saw them as a disruption and an inconvenience (Farhoomand, 2006). The continued search for lower prices made him aware of business related travel cost, Wal-Mart executives stayed in low cost hotels when they traveled and the cost related to the services provided by suppliers, Wal-Mart helped suppliers improve operations and efficiency to produce lower cost. Walton wanted the suppliers to correct any nonessential or insufficiencies existing in their business structures as a way of gaining lower prices and higher value products for its Wal-Mart stores. To further push savings Wal-Mart forced cost down by eliminating the middleman and buying directly from the manufacturers. This cost saving also applied to executive salaries Walton felt providing employees with stock options, training opportunities, and allow employees to grow and develop would be a better way to engage and involve them in his vision (Farhoomand, 2006).
Walmart is a retail giant that just about everyone in America has purchased something from them. It is a one stop shop for anything that a person could ever need. Walmart stores can be found anywhere in fact most people are less than an hour drive away from a Walmart store. Walmart’s success has put many companies out of business. The chains success is primarily from low prices and using an information technology system to meet customer demands giving them a competitive advantage. Walmart’s first major use of information technology came in 1975 when the company leased an IBM computer system to track inventory in warehouses and distribution centers. Computers have come a very long way since this time and are used almost everywhere. But in 1975 this was cutting edge technology and gave Walmart the competitive advantage over other retailers. Another thing that Walmart used to be revolutionary in their supply chain was the use of scanning barcodes in 1983. Before barcodes objects had to be read by a skilled cashier. With barcodes all that was needed was a quick scan and the computer would do all the work. This greatly sped up checkout time and made tracking inventory and data collection much faster and easier for both customers and the employees. Since this time it has become an industry standard for products.
Wal-Mart is known to beone of the best supply chain companies in the world. Throughout the years Wal-Mart has adapted strategies that keep up to their name. Unlike many retailers, Wal-Mart purchases goods directly from manufacturers, skipping a few steps of the supply chain cycle. Buyers use advanced negotiation skills to make sure they are receiving the best price on purchases. Wal-Mart also has their own trucks picking up from warehouses, reducing the price significantly on transportation. Long term relationships with vendors are extremely emphasized to understand prices and cost structure. These practices build Wal-Mart to its name and keeps low prices for retail customers all over the world. Supply Chain studies have shown that in 1998, Wal-Mart would fill up stock in 2 days compared to their competitors which would complete it in 5. Part of the reason Wal-Mart would replenish so
Wal-mart has a reputation for caring for its customers, of course their employees, and for the prospective public. So Wal-Mart can be an industrial leader for the world of shoppers with an eye for lower affordable prices, company decision makers would continue it's systematic strategies that it's founder and president established years ago. Sam Walton believed in three guiding principles in his strategy planning they were to provide the customer with good value and service, to have a good relationship with its associates, and to be involved with the community.
The gross profit during the year 2015 was actually a $10 billion increase from their fiscal year 2014 (University of San Francisco, 2015). Over the past six years, Walmart continues to generate these types of numbers, representing increases in growth, time and time again. The company’s income was generated by more than 4,500 stores in the United States alone which is supported by a supply chain that moved from number 14 to number 13 on research and analyst company Gartner’s annual ranking (University of San Francisco, 2015). Many business professionals have analyzed and interpreted Walmart’s supply chain management approaches, making it apparent which elements of their strategy have proven effective. These major supply chain components that have shaped Walmart’s success over recent years are their buyer bargaining power (one of Porter’s Five Forces), focus on the overall customer experience, and investments in emerging technologies along with the implementation of these technologies in their business