1. To what extent is Wal-Mart’s performance attributable to industry attractiveness and to what extent to competitive advantage?
Wal-Mart is a company which operates in the service sector, more specifically in the “Discount, Variety Stores/Retail” industry. The company’s superior performance is demonstrated through the fact that it was America’s largest company (in terms of revenue) in 2002, and the reputation of the company is reflected in the opinion of “Fortune” who have identified Wal-Mart as one of the world’s most admired companies. In 2004 Wal-Mart had been hiring 1.4 million employees – making it the largest corporation in the world. Wal-Mart’s share prices have also been stable at time of stock market volatility. There are
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The store management is decentralized, allowing individual store managers more power in decision-making, as they were expected to come up with their own methods for cutting prices and increasing sales. This is done differently in the competitors’ stores, where policies are brought in regional offices. Superior personal customer service offered at the stores from 9am to 9pm six days a week, with shorter working hours on Sundays (Supercentres were open continuously) together with specialized employee training provided customers with an atmosphere in which they were happy to spend their time and money.
Marketing
Wal-Mart’s slogan “Everyday Low Prices” is the milestone of their communication with the public as well as their basic business principle. The corporation mainly used word-of-mouth advertising and spent a lot less on marketing than the industry competitors. A strong emphasis was put on patriotism and national causes, when it comes to the U.S. market.
Information Technology
Wal-Mart’s advanced data-mining tools allow them to fine tune and improve customer responsiveness, giving customers what and when they want in offer. It can be compared to
Human Resource Management
In Wal-Mart, employees are valued and empowered. All employees are called “associates” symbolizing their importance to the firm. The belief is also that the employees will work harder if treated well. Open doors and open books policy is enforced to make sure that, employees are empowered to
(1) Wal-Mart’s promotional strategy of “everyday-low-prices” meant offering customers brand name merchandise for less than department and specialty store prices.
Question 1: What were the rights of Walmart, the employer, during these two organizing drives?
the superior tracking capability of RFID chips would reduce shrinkage and other forms of loss by up
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”
Walmart revolutionised the department store structure by drawing consumers away from the classical approach into an urban utopia. Walmart has a high distribution footprint, on average, since 1962 Walmart has acquired 125 stores each year, making them a monumental player in the department store industry. Walmart started as a monopoly occupying the entire market as the original mass commercial outlet. For some time, Walmart was considered a hypercompetitive environment because of new threats flooded the market. Since the competition was direct and fervent, gaining competitive advantage was temporary, until the company introduced five retail divisions and five specialty division. By doing this they deviated themselves
Wal-Mart is an American company that was founded in the year 1962 by Sam Walton. The company operates in the retail industry. Notably, the company operates various chains of stores in the entire world which has made the venture a big success in the retail industry. The efficiency and the effectiveness of the company’s operations have seen it ranked the second largest public company in the world (Copeland & Labuski, 2013). The company has over two million workers which makes the leading private corporation employer in the world. Notably, despite the fact that the company is traded publicly, Wal-Mart is more of a family company since Walton’s family still controls over fifty percent of the company’s shares. The company has expanded its business through venturing into external markets such as China, the United Kingdom, North Korea, South Korea, North America, and so forth. However, these markets have produced mixed results in terms of the level of success and profitability. For instance, the German market and the South Korean markets have turned out to be less favorable for the company.
The Dollar General is an American wholesale company that was first initiated in Scottsville, Tennessee by Turner and Cal Turner. Its headquarters are located in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. The mission statement of the Dollar General is "Serving Others." This mission statement helps to bring out the innate requests and intentions of the company in the United States of America and other countries in the world. The company has a vision that describes how it manages to cater for four different types of people. These four groups of people include the customers, the community, employees, and shareholders. Within these categories of people, Dollar General aspires to serve others through deliver of price quality and terrific prices for customers, opportunity, and respect for employees, a superior return for shareholders and a better life for the communities.
Ans:Wal-Mart,Inc runs a chain of large, discount department stores.it is the world’s largest public corporation by revenue. Walmart is the largest private employer and the largest grocery retailer in the United States. Walmart is one of the best known industries all over the world. Its concentration of a single business strategy is the basis of its success over the decades by this strategy without having to rely upon diversification to sustain its growth and competitive advantage. The leading marketing strategies of Wal-Mart are low prices, service and smile. However by adapting this strategy, it has risked itself by putting all of a company’s egg in one industry basket. While its global strategy worked elsewhere, the results were bad in Germany and Korea that Wal-Mart withdrew from those countries.
Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) were introduced in 1980 with the purpose of saving energy. They initially were very expensive and consumers were aware of many flaws that made them hesitant to purchase the bulbs and bring them into their homes. The positive effects of switching from alternative bulbs to CFLs were overshadowed by media attention highlighting the issues that remained unresolved. Wal-Mart pushed promotional programs in 2007 that were very successful. They introduced a private label at a lower price, offered online ordering, posititioned the products well, installed interactive displays and engaged with new partners to promote energy efficiency. In 2009 the CFLs were redesigned and
Ragan Fretwell - Case 23: Walmart: But We Do Give Them a 10% Employee Discount
A. Wal-Mart realized through third party studies and internal research that the Chinese customer were significantly more cost-sensitive than those in other countries and that there existed a strong, established culture of frequently shopping around to find the absolute lowest prices. Through these studies, Wal-Mart also realized that customer satisfaction level greatly influenced customer loyalty in China. The greatest determinant of this satisfaction was made up of perceived value. The perceived value is composed of three sub factors: (1) Product price, (2) Relative price and (3) Promotion. The other factors for customer satisfaction in descending order of its importance are Image,
In this case study I will be discussing the company Wal-Mart Stores: Every Day low Prices in China. By the time 2005 rolled in China has become the most prominent country to set up a branch for stores. China had a huge open market and it was time for the company to take advantage of the opportunity that was happening in China. Wal-Mart has become the world’s largest retail chain. This can only mean one thing and that is expansion. The strategic move to expand the company chain stores to China was based off of the following factors. First factor was China size as far as land, population. They also had a booming middle
I hope had a joyous holiday and New Year. As a valued client, I am writing to inform you of a possible addition for your portfolio for 2006. I have been monitoring Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (Wal-Mart) and recently I conducted extensive analysis on the company’s financial performance. Throughout the following document, I will present the key pieces of information that I have gathered from my analysis to support my recommendation to purchase or not purchase shares of Wal-Mart. Then, based upon the information presented, you can best decide whether or not to include the equity in your portfolio. You will learn about the history of Wal-Mart and its operations, the number of locations and its competitors. From annual reports and 10-K filings, I will include factors for the company’s success, the competitive situation, as well as Wal-Mart’s strengths and weaknesses. The company overview provides a good backdrop to the quantitative data that is then presented for the retailing giant during 2004, 2005 and forecasted for 2006. The information will include Wal-Mart’s past financial performance during 2004 and 2005, as well as the associated ratios, and forecasted results for 2006 regarding potential financial operations, profitability or losses, as well as if the company will need to rely upon external borrowing. You will also receive the intrinsic value of Wal-Mart based upon the dividend discount model, assumptions to reach the stated conclusions and the required rate of
We would like to show our gratitude to Resp. Prof. Mr. Sham Sharma, for providing us with the golden opportunity to prepare an intellectual report, on Distribution & Logistics Management of “wal-mart”.
1. What is the ethical dilemma facing Wal-Mart in this case ? Do Wal-Mart’s associates also face an ethical dilemma? If so, what is it ?