Wal Mart : The Biggest Retailer Of The World With A Revenue Greater Than $ 485 Billion

Having strong presence in the retail industry, the firm expanded business to offer second hand car. The firm leverage on its competencies to provide its own product to consumer. Also, Wal-Mart works heavily with its suppliers. This symbiotic relationship can be seen as vertical integration due to the level at which Wal-Mart analyses its suppliers and improves their manufacturing processes. Wal-Mart definitely has the business strategy of Low Cost Leadership. They do nothing to really differentiate themselves from competitors and provide no-frills self-service stores that always provide the lowest prices. Wal-Mart has built enough clout with suppliers that they can dictate the prices and go in and change suppliers manufacturing processes in order to wring out more and more savings for the consumer.

“Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the nation and the world’s largest retailer. With 1.6 million workers, 1.3 million in the United States and 300,000 offshore.” (Article #4.4 in reader). Thousands of Wal-Mart stores across the United States of America are best known for their slogan there of everyday low-prices guarantee. Wal-Mart retailers are regarded by the general American public for the place to go to find everything from fishing gear to groceries at the lowest prices. However, to obtain these low prices Wal-Mart must cut expenses, which it does across the board, including the pay and benefits to its workers in the United States. Wal- Mart 's low prices do often save the consumer money at the counter when they purchase

Wal-Mart Stores are an irresistible (or at least unavoidable) retail force that has yet to meet any immovable objects. They follow three pricing philosophies: Every Day Low Prices, Rollback, and Special Buy. Bigger than Carrefour, Royal Ahold, and Kroger combined, it is the world's #1 retailer, with more than 4,500 stores, including discount stores (Wal-Mart), combination discount and grocery stores (Wal-Mart Supercenters), and membership-only warehouse stores (Sam’s). Most of its stores are in the US, but Wal-Mart is expanding internationally; it is the #1 retailer in Canada and Mexico. Wal-Mart also has

Cost Leadership Strategy: Walmart success can be credited to its cost leadership strategy, the company has been selling goods at cheaper rates when compared to its competitors. This strategy of theirs has attracted millions of customers and it has been one of the reason for their success, they build warehouse like stores that only sells products which has helped them reduce costs and give lower prices to

Its everyday low price concept provides customers with products with cheaper prices than its competitors rather than relying on sales. Wal-Mart can use this strategy because of its large-scale and efficient supply chain. Their products are purchased from cheap domestic suppliers and low-wage foreign markets, which allows Wal-Mart to sell products at a low price and earn profits. On the other hand, Wal-Mart is open twenty-four hours, providing food, dry foods and services, all in one location that will convenient customers. In addition, Wal-Mart focuses on IT and innovation so that their technology has always been ahead of others. For example, it built its own information systems, satellite communications systems and data interchange system. Wal-Mart’s value proposition is maintaining its leadership in low price and huge selection in order to provide a good value to

Little differentiation. Walmart has no differentiation compared to its competitors, which might hurt the company in the future if commodity prices or average consumer income would increase. In this case, low cost leadership strategy wouldn’t be as effective as it currently is and Walmart’s main competitive advantage would erode.

Wal-Mart — the world’s largest most dominant retailer and private employer. Established a highly profitable business centered on a low-cost strategy and utilizes logistical efficiencies to create a competitive advantage. This is a general merchandise discount retailer that was incorporated in 1962 but yet, only established in Canada in 1994.

Wal-Mart’s position from the competitive forces model competition among rivals is fairly weak. The market is crowded but Wal-Mart has the lowest costs, prices, profits, and market share. Wal-Mart exerts a great deal of effort in making sure they are innovative and meeting customer requests. The bargaining power of suppliers is weak as well. For most producers, Wal-Mart would be their largest account. The bargaining power of buyers is also weak. There is a very broad base of customers and a meaningful demand for low prices. The threat of new entrants is weak. Wal-Mart has a scale of operation that is very important, it would take years, maybe even decades, for a new company to be on the same level. Even prominent companies today would have really difficult time matching the costs and prices Wal-Mart provides.

As well, the world’s economy is not at its best moments, people become more preoccupied about price, and use this as the number one shopping criteria. On top, Wal-Mart has the ability to diversify their products and service offerings. They could add travel agencies, kindergartens, cleaning services, tax services and much more. Another good opportunity is to improve in the areas they were criticized before, such as employee benefits and medical coverage, employees’ wages and even environmental issues as pollution. Wal-Mart could also focus on its online sales, as it is becoming the new shopping trend. Many opportunities await this retailer in the future.

Wal-Mart is the largest and most innovative company in the world, grossing annual revenue of $430 billion dollars and maintains stores internationally. Although it has seen its success in areas of customer service, it currently sees the negative impact that anti-corporation groups and lawsuits can have on profits. Although these problems would amount to a sufficient issue, an even bigger issue facing Wal-Mart today is the consistent approaching threat of competition with fellow rivals such as the stores Kmart, Target, and the practicality of Dollar stores. Everything from wage rates, prices, economy, technology, etc., has been affected by Wal-Mart’s success. Although the threat of competition does not outweigh the overall success that

The product and promotion strategy is also very important for Wal-Mart. They not only provide all of the regular products at the lowest price but they have expanded their product line by bringing their own brand and labels like Sam’s Choice. In 2006 Coca-Cola had to change their distribution for one of the products because it feared that the Wal-Mart brand would take them out of business (www.yahoo.com). That is how strong the product and promotion strategy is for Wal-Mart.

As we have reviewed and studied the strategy, culture, finances and the challenges and successes at Wal-Mart, there are many strategies we see that the company must undertake to hold its dominate position and drive further growth. Herein, we define our top four. These core strategies include: rebuild and recreate its reputation in the face of recent challenges; continue to show price leadership; improve the customer experience; and drive international growth.

and systematic integration with most of its suppliers which is a large part of Wal-Mart’s crucial low-cost advantage. The company generally requires suppliers to tie in to its own inventory management system and to deliver goods in the manner and timing Wal-Mart dictates, leading to impressive inventory turns (especially considering that half of revenue is from non-grocery categories) Furthermore, a no-frills store environment also improves total asset turns and limits maintenance capital investment. In addition, as a low-cost general retailer, Wal-Mart has built a reputation with consumers as a one-stop shop for good deals on a huge spectrum of merchandize. The company has been aggressively trying to further reduce stock-keeping units and lower prices. Most cost

Walmart is the largest retail chain in the world wide and has most of its business resident in the United States. The shares size and corresponding volumes that it needs to purchase to stock its stores gives it the bargaining power to negotiate lower wholesale prices. This translates into being able to deliver low prices to its customers. The company has been in business for several years and has become a trusted brand and a household name. The size of the company has also allowed it to be able to “cope with compressed prices and margins,” and have stores throughout the country as brick and mortar stores and now online. Walmart had a profit margin of 2.35% in its most recent quarter.

Wal-Mart is a cost leader. They have adopted this generic strategy to offer their competitors low prices in order to sustain competitive advantage in the industry. Wal-Mart has a cost advantage over its competitors, because they are able to create more benefit than their competitors by offering products at a lower cost and sell more. They can achieve benefit parity, which means that they are able to offer a benefit that is not much less than its competitors, or benefit proximity by offering a slightly lower benefit (Besanko, Dranove, Shanley, & Schaefer, 2013). Wal-Mart has strong horizontal differentiation and a low price elasticity of demand.