K-Mart's Global Expansion: Case Analysis

Kroger Supermarkets were started in 1883 by Barney Kroger in downtown Cincinnati. Mr. Kroger started his business with the motto: “Be particular. Never sell anything you would not want yourself.” Through the years Kroger has strived to uphold this motto to its customers and to provide great service, the freshest products and expansion to meet the needs of their customer base making it one of the world’s largest retailers. Kroger now has over 2,600 stores in 34 states with $108.5 billion in annual sales. Kroger operates 37 food processing facilities and Kroger was the first grocery retailer to use the electronic scanner.

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

Walmart is the world's largest company by revenue (approximately four hundred and eighty billion dollars) and the largest private employer in the world with two point three million employees. Walmart is also one of the world's most valuable companies by market value, and is also the largest grocery retailer in the U.S. “One Nation Under Walmart” is a case about how Walmart has taken over the retail business and the effects of their market domination. The case also shows statistics of how much percentage Walmart is of many suppliers’ sales. According to the case Walmart has a 30% market share of all household items. Twenty-eight percent of Dial’s business and twenty-four percent of Del Monte’s business go through Walmart stores. It is also worth noting that Walmart imports ten percent of all United States imports from China. The case states that Walmart is able to offer cheaper prices because they put so much pressure on their suppliers to lower their prices. The case, “One Nation Under Walmart”, explains the problems that some people have with the massive retailer. One of these problems is how Walmart has forced numerous local businesses to close their doors through their extremely competitive pricing. They are able to purchase bulk goods at such low prices and thus pass the savings onto customers. As a result of these lew costs, rivals are driven out of business which results in a loss of jobs. Jobs are vital to the success of a community and with Walmart causing job

Question 1: What were the rights of Walmart, the employer, during these two organizing drives?

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

Kroger Company’s headquarter is in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it is one of the largest United States supermarket chain. Kroger Company has multiple stores in different areas. It serves the Food & Staples Retailing. Kroger provides different products in its stores including food and drugs

The Kroger Company is an American retailer established by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Ohio USA. It’s the country 's biggest supermarket chain and second biggest general retailer (after Wal-Mart). Kroger is also the fifth biggest retailer in the world as of 2013. Kroger operates 2,625 stores across the USA with its headquarters in downtown Cincinnati Kroger. It operates 40 plants for manufacturing, mostly bakeries and dairies. Additionally they are operating 777 convenience stores and 374 jewelry stores through various subsidiaries. Kroger also oversees 87 convenience stores, which were operates through franchise agreements. It operates in the markets of 31 states.

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 Kroger Company grew in 128 years from one store to over 3,500 stores of various banners and products. The Kroger Company is the largest food and drug retailer in the United States and is growing constantly with diversity in the retail market, dealing in food, pharmacies, apparel, jewelry and fuel. Kroger is governed by a 14 member Board of Directors including a Chief Executive Officer. Kroger is a leader in Corporate Social responsibility by maintaining environmental consciousness, social awareness and energy conservation awareness. Kroger is committed to customers, builds diversity and focuses on growth. The company operates a large part of it’s own manufacturing and distribution to increase profit

The development of the Internet and more specifically the business website has seen brand recognition by consumers escalate to never before seen heights. Because of this brand recognition, it has become important for businesses to design their websites to reflect their overall marketing strategies. This is especially important in the retail world. All retail businesses have a similar overall marketing strategy of generating sales and retaining the customer for future sales. Most of the retail giants still greatly rely on the success of their brick and mortar stores to turn a profit. However, internet sales for these brick and mortar stores have increasingly risen over the last few years to compete with the retail stores like Amazon that are strictly internet based businesses. Brick and mortar retail stores, such as Walmart, Target, Kmart, and Nordstrom, have each designed their websites to reflect the overall retail marketing strategy as well as the individual marketing strategies that have made their brick and mortar businesses successful.

Best Buy, a familiar retailer in the technology world, is struggling to stay on top. Online and mass stores have cornered the market in terms of convenience, customer service and price matching. The recent closing of over two hundred stores alongside falling sales has experts predicting that the giant won’t be in business long. Using a results-only work environment (ROWE), Best Buy has removed the customer from the equation and forced many employees out. A marketing disaster, Best Buy must change its marketing strategy from sales-based to a customer-based to stay afloat.

Currently Kmart has been constantly losing to competitors such as Wal-Mart and Target. Target is seen as a higher class store compared to the other two, and Wal-Mart is seen as a good store with good prices. Kmart has had trouble finding it’s own identity. They try to market themselves as being a better bargain than Wal-Mart, but the store is viewed as being “cheap” from the customer’s point of view. Kmart tried to fix that, by bringing in the Martha Stewart line. They

“Sears service and products are as good as our competitors but they're not where our customers are. With the addition of Kmart this now gives us the opportunity to grow off-mall locations closer to the customer” (Bhatnagar, 2004). Kmart stores are primarily located in strip malls in heavily populated cities opposed to Sears’s stores, which are usually located in larger malls with more competition and are farther away.

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

Walmart is successful by following a cost leadership strategy. Their sales revenues were $375 billion in 2008 but their profit was