Dollar General Corporation: Deep-Discounted Retail Industry

First, let’s look at “For Customers, A Better Life.” Dollar General doesn’t try to carry everything. They narrow their product selection down to include only the most common necessities.

There are several different types of stores within the discount retail industry, and for comparison's sake, the industry is further broken into many segments. DG is in the market segment known as the dollar store category. As a result, competitors such as Wal-Mart are in the same industry but not the same peer group. Comparisons will be made throughout this report to Wal-Mart and other big firms because they tend draw some of the same customers.

D’mart is a one-stop stop destination for the whole family which serves all their household needs and has wide range of home utility products including foods, toiletries, beauty products, home appliance and much more. D’mart was established in 2000 by Mr.R.K.Damani in Mumbai. Since then it has grown into a trusted and

Sam Walton’s extraordinary business strategies drove Walmart to its success and their key focus was customer satisfaction. As part of their customer centric initiatives Walmart had set up a unique pricing strategy with their “Every Day Low Prices” EDLP (Karen Robson, 2013). They would offer customers their daily needs at the lowest possible price to drive Walmart’s growth in the United States (Karen Robson, 2013) . Their pricing strategy was different than other major retailers in the U.S at the time; this provided an advantage towards rapid success and expansion (Karen Robson, 2013).

turnover, which is made possible by low prices and limited product selection. This business model is appealing for them and has many benefits. Firstly, by setting up the business approach to rapidly

Wal-Mart founded in 1962 by Sam Walton is now the largest American retail corporation. With thousands of chains of stores and warehouses Wal-Mart monopolized the American retail industry. In addition, Wal-Mart is the second largest retail corporation in the world employing of two million employees world-wide. As one of the most valuable corporations in the world Wal-Mart continues to improve their sales annually while offering some of the lowest prices available. Wal-Mart’s famous low price guarantee, come at a high expense of the environment, the small businesses, education, the rights and safety of the consumer, but most importantly their employees. Although Wal-Mart has plays a dominate role in American economy, this “American”

1. The grocery industry is a commoditized industry, which makes it difficult for grocers to sustain through differentiation. Buyer power is high and thus, cost leadership and operational efficiencies are critical. There is fierce competition amongst various grocery stores, with the main players such as Loblaw and A&P holding multi-banner stores in various market segments. Traditional grocery stores also lose some of their market share to drug stores, convenience stores and other retailers who have entered the industry. Threat of substitutes from fast-food and take- away outlets is not as prevalent, since many grocery stores have started stocking ready-to-eat meals and have deli services available for consumers. Competitive

The companies I am studying are Wal-Mart and Target. Both are major discount retailers, general merchandisers who compete as cost leaders. These companies both very large, big enough to execute on their strategies effectively. Yet one has chosen the path of international growth and the other has not yet, pending expansion into Canada in 2013.

Is Wal-mart the ideal store to shop it? Austrian economic and business professional Karen De Coster and banker Brad Edmonds believe that Wal-mart improves the lives of people in rural areas because it gives them access to a lifestyle that they would not have if Wal-mart did not exist.

What is Costco’s business model? Is the company’s business model appealing? Why or why not?

Ultra-low prices and treasure-hunt shopping cause merchandise to move quickly. The ensuing high sales volume and rapid inventory turnover allow Costco to sell inventory as soon as it arrives at the warehouse resulting in significant savings. To ensure ultra-low prices Costco caps mark-up at 14% and marks up Kirkland products at only 15%. Treasure-hunt shopping creates a sense of urgency as members know they better buy an item or it will not be there the next time.

The stark contrast between the setting of the vision and the discount store suggests that the main character is greatly dissatisfied with her life. Being pulled into the vision, she experienced a “sudden burst of light, an explosion of inspiration, [and] a fleeting illumination” (Homes). In this world, she owns a house with “untouched by reality” with “everything just as you would want it to be”. She sees this perfect house as the embodiment “the life she is supposed to live”, reflecting the fact that she desires material goods and wealth. Furthermore, she sees “not only the future but a pathway”, indicating that she feels limited and aimless in her life. Yet, with no pomp or gush of energy as before, she was pulled back into this reality with

In business, three major strategies comprising of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategies exist. The focus strategy emphasizes on providing services and products to a specified buyer group or market segment within a given geographic market. The differentiation approach is often defined as provision of services or products that are perceived to be unique in the market place. Wal-Mart emphasizes on the long-term strategy of cost leadership. Through this strategy, the company ensures that it offers customers with quality products at relatively lower prices than other providers in the industry. Through overall cost leadership strategy, Wal-Mart has been offering better quality products at a lower price than any competitor can offer. For the organization to achieve this goal, it has developed long-term supply chain management, which ensures that products are made available to the market at the required time (Enz, 2010).

The Dollar Tree brand of stores has been around since 1986, when Douglas Perry, Macon Brock, and Ray Compton founded the chain as a compliment to their other business, K & K Toys (Parnell, 2014). Through the years, Dollar Tree has acquired several different dollar store and low-end retail chains to grow their business to over 4000 stores (Shetty, 2010). One of the first and most strategic moves that the company made was to shift away from carrying closeout merchandise and to become more of a traditional variety store with a wide variety of basic goods all priced at a dollar or less. To accomplish this change, the chain had to discontinue their current purchasing strategies and had to begin buying directly from manufacturers to change the type of merchandise that they had available for consumers. The second major strategic move involved changing the location of where stores are usually located. Up until this point, the stores had been being in enclosed malls. With this change,

The recognized giants in today’s discount retail market are Wal-Mart, Sears, Roebuck and Company, and Target, and this paper compares Wal-Mart and Target. As the competition stiffens to capture market niches, these two organizations are heading for a showdown. This work demonstrates distinctive differences in company culture, promotion within the organization, lofty goal setting, and leadership styles between these two organizations. Although this paper shows a definite competitive advantage for the Wal-Mart organization, it will also demonstrate that Target