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Swot Analysis of Wal-Mart

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In 1962, Sam Walton founded Wal-Mart by opening the first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was incorporated October 31, 1969. By the end of the 1960s, Wal-Mart had grown to 276 stores in 11 states, and Wal-Mart went public in 1972. In 1991, Wal-Mart opened its first international store in Mexico City and has never looked back. As of this year, Wal-Mart has 8,446 store and club locations in 15 countries that serve more than 176 million customers every year (walmartstores.com) Every company, even one as large as Wal-Mart, has strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Some of Wal-Mart’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, identified using information from their website, walmartstores.com, are the …show more content…

Due to the cheap rate that Wal-Mart is able to buy its products from suppliers, it is able to provide customers with even bigger bargains to encourage them to shop at its stores. In addition to its low prices, Wal-Mart should continue with its current strategy of large, super centers, which is basically a one stop shopping experience for everything you may need or want. The one-stop shop experience is appealing to customers in that it makes shopping easier. To provide the ease of shopping Wal-Mart is guaranteeing that the customers will find what they want when they want it. This is supported by convenient presentation and the right level of service every time the customer shops. In doing so, Wal-Mart can appeal to an even larger market. According to pages 151 and 152 in the textbook, this opportunity would become apparent if Wal-Mart used a low-cost strategy where the business produces basic, no-frills products for a large market of price-sensitive shoppers. • New locations and store types offer Wal-Mart opportunities to exploit market development. They diversified from large super centers, to local and mall-based sites, such as their Wal-Mart Neighborhood Markets and their Marketside stores. Using a focus-low-cost strategy, page 153 in the textbook, that enables Wal-Mart to realize the opportunity of appealing to those customers who want the feel of shopping in a

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