WAL-MART'S MARKETING STRATEGY
Wal-Mart was founded by Sam Walton, the first Wal-Mart store opened in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. Seventeen years later, annual sales toped $1 billion. By the end of January 2002, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. was the world's largest retailer with $218 billion in sales. Wal-Mart's winning strategy in the U.S. was based on selling branded products at low cost, which enables the lower class and middle class consumers to shop for products and save. Due to the advances in technology over the years Wal-Mart has been able to achieve tremendous success. Wal-Mart's success has allowed the company to expand out of the United States.
About 100 million customers visit a Wal-Mart store somewhere in the world.
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Stores were built as far away as possible but still within a day's drive of the distribution center; the area then was filled back for saturated back to the distribution center. Each distribution center operated 24 hours a day using laser-guided conveyor belts and cross-docking techniques that received goods on one side while simultaneously filling orders on the other. The company owned a fleet of more than 3,000 trucks and 12, 000 trailers. (Most competitors outsourced trucking.) Wal-Mart had implemented a satellite network system that allowed information to be shared between the company's wide network of stores, distribution centers, and suppliers. The system consolidated orders for goods, enabling the company to buy full truckload quantities without incurring the inventory costs. Wal-Mart's strategy was to build large discount stores in small rural towns. By contrast, competitors such as Kmart focused on large towns with populations greater than 50,000. Wal-Marts utilizes the pulling strategy, pricing strategy, and product strategy is the promotional effort by the seller to stimulate final user demand, which then exerds pressure on the distribution channel.
Wal-Marts strategy is to provide everyday low prices and superior customer service. This allows Wal-Mart to replenish the shelves 4 times faster than its competition. Wal-Mart's ability to replenish their shelves four times faster than its competition is
Wal-Mart Corporation is one of the largest retail stores in the world. They serve customers in meeting their needs with low cost saving items. On October 31, 1962, Wal-Mart was founded and incorporated by Sam Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas. Mr. Walton went into business because he felt that items sold were too high for the average customer to afford. His focus was to sell products at low prices to get higher volume sales at a lower profit margin. He bought bulk products from different suppliers so he could incorporate savings into his pricing to lower cost for customers. Under the savings cost concept, Wal-Mart grew rapidly and surpassed its competitors in sales and generating profits.
Wal-Mart, founded by Sam Walton in 1962, is the world’s largest retailer and public corporation. It operates over 6,500 stores worldwide, employs 1.9 million associates, and serves more
4. Relations with Suppliers- Wal-Mart has in place a system that helps to achieve their goal of lower prices. This Information Technology system includes computers, networking, and internet that cuts inventories and waste and helps with speedy delivery. This system also helps Wal-Mart to keep in constant contact with suppliers by transferring the data that suppliers need so they know what Wal-Mart needs. Wal-Mart also works with suppliers to improve their production and squeezes the best prices out of its supplier. The video referred to Wal-Mart as the customer’s agent. All of this focus Wal-Mart puts on suppliers reduces costs and lowers prices. Wal-Mart’s technological/logistical leadership remains unmatched by competitors (Web, 2005).
Wal-Mart is a world-wide active American retail trade company and currently the largest retail company in the world. Beginning in 1962, Wal-Mart has made the transition from a small firm in Arkansas to the largest employer with 3, 800 store units in the United States with record revenues today. But nevertheless, since Wal-Mart launched its online branch, it had to suffer from substantial setbacks from competitors such as Amazon.com or Ebay.
Founded by Sam Walton in 1962 as a discount city store in Bentonville, Wal-mart was incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on October 31, 1969 as an American public corporation that runs a chain of large, discount department stores. Within five years, the company expanded to 24 stores across Arkansas and reached $12.6 million in sales.Wal-Mart further expands outside America and operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the UK as ASDA, and in Japan as Seiyu. It has wholly-owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the UK.Presently listed on NYSE, Wal-Mart began trading stock as a publicly-held company on October 1, 1972. According to the 2007 Fortune Global 500, Wal-Mart is the world's largest
Walmart’s approach means frequent, informal cooperation among stores, distribution centres and suppliers and less centralized control. The company’s supply chain allowed consumers to effectively pull merchandise to stores rather than having the company push goods onto shelves by tracking customer purchases and demand. Through the use of universal product codes, implementation of Retail links at the store, use of RFIDs and smart tags, suppliers and manufacturers within the supply chain synchronize their demand forecaste under a collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment scheme, and every link in the chain was connected through technology that includes a central database, store-level point-of-sale systems, and a satellite network. As per report, there was a 16% reduction in out-of-stocks with the use of RFIDs and pointed out that the products using an electronic product code were replenished three times as fast as items that only used bar code technology. These strategies have made Walmart to be the dominant force over other competitors with information and technology helping its supply chain strategy attain greater
When it comes to retail giants, Walmart stands tallest by a very large margin. In fact, Walmart’s retail sales more than tripled their closest competitor in 2015 (“STORES top retailers 2016,” 2016). Walmart has consistently used the same marketing strategy for many years. Their “Everyday Low Price” strategy is a well-known advertisement moniker and has driven repeat sales to customers for years (Ferguson, 2015). Another familiar sign
 Good distribution concepts with no one store more than 6 hrs. away from warehouse.
Wal-Mart didn’t just get by with cost-saving methods. They were ahead of their competitor’s technology wise too. Even in the 1970’s, Wal-Mart was able to track inventories in their warehouses and link it with stores. They tracked their sales data for specific items and could increase or decrease their inventory accordingly, achieving a higher efficiency than other retail companies. Another aspect that Wal-Mart felt strongly about was expanding there reaches. In 1978, they introduced a Pharmacy, auto center and jewelry divisions.
Retail super-giant Wal-Mart has fought its way to becoming the world's largest company. Wal-Mart’s legendary supply chain technology has allowed them to break the three-day barrier that some economists in the eighties felt that it was unbreakable. In other words, Wal-Mart is often able to replenish items on the Wal-Mart shelf in less than three days – not from the central warehouse to the shelf, but from the manufacturer to the shelf. With quick and reliable 2-day turn around, Wal-Mart is able to maintain lower levels of inventory and still meet customer demand. These lower inventory levels result in either a reduced floor plan with lower carrying costs and lower interest expense – or a greater diversity of products on the store shelves.
Like all departmental and/or discount stores, Wal-Mart's strategies are focused around achieving the goals such as building a large and strong customer base, under-cutting competitors, and organization of its supply chain in the most efficient and effective manner and above all, market growth.
Since 1962 and the beginning of the discount retailer market Wal-Mart has been ahead of the retail game. By 1967 there were 24 Wal-Marts that had grossed 12.6 million dollars. In just 7 years Wal-mart had spread into 9 states. By 1979 Wal-Mart was the fastest store to reach a billion dollars in sales. In 2005 Wal-Mart has 3,800 domestic stores along with 3,800 stores internationally, and had made over 312 billion dollars. As you can see the Wal-Mart empire has grown monumentally. To move into this segment of the market would be tough.
Price has always been the key strategy in Wal-Mart’s marketing strategy. The success of Wal-Mart’s low price philosophy and marketing campaigns has been instrumental to the company’s success in the past half century. It is clear that from Sam Walton’s first store in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1950 to the 6200 stores worldwide as of 2006, Wal-Mart has utilized the price strategy of the marketing mix to become one of the most successful companies in
Walmart is the largest retailer in the world. Sam Walton the founder of Walmart, opened the first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962. Sam Walton was born in 1918 in Oklahoma. Sam Walton started of working for the famous retailer we still know today which is JC Penney. Walton then gave up his job and decided to open up his own retail store. He first purchased a franchise in Arkansas. Sam Walton began offering huge discounts on prices, he became successful due to the cheap prices made affordable for customers. Due to his success Walton owned another store in 3 years. By the year 1969, Sam Walton had owned eighteen Walmart stores. Around the late 1970s, the Walmart had added more services into their store such as a pharmacy and an auto service center. Walmart continued to grow due to small towns demanding Walmart’s locally. At the time Walmart was offering low prices, customer satisfaction guaranteed, and store hours that accommodated for the customer’s needs. Walmart opened all night, which made it easier for people who worked during the day. By 1984, there were six hundred and forty Walmart stores in the United States alone. Walmart encountered a great loss in 1992, when the founder of Walmart died Walton. Even after his death Walmart continued its growth by moving business overseas. In 1992, Walmart created its first international store which was in Mexico. Then in the year 1994, Walmart had expanded its franchise into Canada. In 1997, Walmart then began to create
A few reasons as to why Wal-Mart became a leader in the retail industry is due to their practices in obtaining competitive advantage by offering the lowest prices for the market. Wal-Mart built their practices by giving suppliers transparency to meet the demand of customers and granting them long-term relationships by purchasing goods in bulks. In addition, their turn times on inventory are three-five days faster than regular competitors. The inventory shelves are similar to Honda since they only hold up to four hours of inventory in their manufacturing site. Also, Wal-Mart holds their own transportation which is why they can manage their costs efficiently for the company. Their transportations system constitutes links between suppliers, distribution centers and retail stores. They have restrictive criteria for drivers where in order for them to be hired they would have to be accident free for a consistency of minimum 300,000 miles accident free. The supply chain practice that they have gained since they began the business was strategically faster and cheaper than all competitors. 85% of Walmart’s inventory is taken care of by their own transportation system and only about fifteen percent is taken care of by the suppliers through cross-docking. Wal-Mart uses