How to Operate Successfully in an International Environment: Walmart in Germany

Wal-Mart is a brand that is well known around the world, especially in the USA. It has gradually developed into the largest retailer in the world. Wal-Mart’s globalization efforts have been happening rapidly. But have they been successful in all aspects of their international expansion or not? This is the main thought that is going to be discussed in this essay. The questions I will be looking at are based on a case called “Wal-Mart takes on the world” from the book of International Business The Challenge of Global Competition eleventh edition – Ball, McCulloch, Geringer, Minor, and McNett. Questions are the following:

The location of the first Wal-Mart in the Fortune Global 500 for the year of 2001 to 2002 turnover of 219.81 billion dollars. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the retail in the world. The company was much larger than its competitors in the United States - Sears Roebuck, Kmart, JC Penney and Nordstrom combined. In 2002, Wal-Mart operates more than 3,500 discount stores, Supercenters and Sam's Clubs in United States and over 1,170 stores in major countries around the world. The company also sells products online via the website, www.walmart.com. Wal-Mart is one of the largest private employers in the world, with the use of force about 1.28 million. The

As the world’s largest retail store in the world, Walmart wants to be in every market that they can be prosperous in. They know they rule the United States market, so why not try to expand overseas and dominate those markets as well. Now that they have reached limits on expansion here in the U.S., the next step was to test the water in other nations. As they began to go international, there were many critics saying they will never make it because their business practices and culture wouldn’t work in other countries. Yet the company’s globalization efforts progressed at a rapid pace. Its more than 4,263 international retail units employ more than 660,000

Wal-Mart is an international company with extensive retail operations in Mexico, China, Canada and Europe. All of Target's current stores are in the United States. This paper will compare and contrast the approaches that these two companies have taken to different aspects of international relations.

Within less than 30 years, Wal-Mart had transformed from a small rural retailer in Arkansas into the largest retailer in the U.S. In order to continue this rapid growth, the company had started to pursue international expansion grounded in the belief that the firm’s business model of offering quality products at low prices and great customer service would appeal to consumers everywhere around the world (p.8)[1]. China was of particular interest in going international as Wal-Mart’s top management held the opinion that it was the only market in which the firm’s success story in the U.S. could be repeated (p.2/8). However, in 2005 (nine years after its

that they had been harassed by strangers on store premises). While yielding little tangible economic benefits – German consumers have been accustomed for

The consequences of Walmart not working in Germany is that they had to lose a lot of profit because of the money they tried to keep investing on the branches that are in Germany but people weren’t able to grasp the fact that Walmart was in Germany, the retail stores of Germany had more to offer than that of Walmart. Walmart couldn’t live up to their quote that was relating to lower prices every single day. They weren’t even able to control their

Walmart, one of the top retailers globally entered Germany in the 1990’s by acquiring two local retailers. It was not quite successful and the inflexibility and inadaptability of Wal-Mart marked its end in the Europe’s biggest economy and the company had to pull off in 2006. It was seen that Walmart was extremely rigid and stubborn and did not make any attempt to learn the culture, rather they forced English language and American way of doing business as the official culture which was one of the major causes of failure.

One notable business failure of an American corporation in Germany was Wal-Mart, which was forced to entirely close down its operations despite its many international successes elsewhere. This was rooted in Wal-Mart's inability to understand German labor relations. German trade unions are very powerful, and worker protections are important. Initially, Wal-Mart resisted unionization and tried to keep wages low, but was unable to do so because of political pressure from German trade unions and employee refusal to tolerate such working conditions. "Germany service sector union Ver.di, the largest union in the world, filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart for not releasing year-end figures that could be used to negotiate wages. This ultimately led brought

Wal-Marts venture into South Korea is yet another example of a company attempting to duplicate its strategies and business model unsuccessfully. Wal-Mart didn’t consider how the vast differences in culture could affect their survival and ultimately let their complacency, conservatism and conceit get in the way. Their continued losses forced them to withdraw their investment after failing to adapt to the environment, the culture and customer needs. Wal-Mart should have adjusted their leadership style to be able to transcend context as well as engage in cultural sensitivity by localising their business to suit consumer preferences. More knowledge of the environment and competition could have

In order to understand the success and failure of Walmart Stores, Inc. in markets other than the United States, we

Why do you think Wal-Mart did not venture abroad until 1991, despite its success in the USA?

WalMart's initial international expansion has historically seen more failures than successes. Starting in Germany, WalMart pushed the boundaries of cultural norms by insisting on having large superstores that consolidated hundreds of product lines together, while also ignoring the local union laws regarding hourly work schedules (Christopherson, 2007). The German government and most importantly, customers, rejected the store as they preferred to have a series of smaller retailers to purchase from. When news of the hourly schedule conflicts with the German unions became widespread news throughout the country, WalMart was forced to sell the companies it had acquired as part of

by Matthew Boyle Thursday, October 15, 2009 Having grown in fits and starts, Wal-Mart 's international unit has a new game plan. Can it master world markets? It 's rare that a $100 billion business can be marginalized, but such is the case with the international arm of Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). As a standalone company, it would rank among the top five global retailers. Inside the $401 billion retail giant, though, the business has traditionally received short shrift. Its Bentonville (Ark.) headquarters is underwhelming—a drab, largely windowless, one-story structure named after Bill Mitchell, a former Walmart executive whom nobody seems to remember.

The industry environment of Germany has proven to be critical to company performance for Walmart; what specific aspects of the environment have played key roles? Could these effects have been anticipated prior to market entry?