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Wal-Mart's competitive strategies
Wal-Mart's competitive strategies
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Olsson’s article “Up Against Walt-Mart” is an investigative reporting. Wal-Mart say “We Sell for Less” and “Everyday Low Prices”. Wal-Mart managers push the employees to the limit; they just want to see how much they can get away with without having to hire someone else. The company is the world’s largest retailer, with 4220 billion in sales, and nation’s largest private employer, with 3,372 stores and more than 1 billion hourly workers. Its annual revenues account for 2 percent of America’s entire domestic products.
In the recent years Walmart has been far our performing its top two competitors; Costco and Target. With a market cap of 212,195,024, Walmart had beaten its competitors who remain at 65,969,279 for Costco and 43,701,237 Target (NASDAQ, Competitors). This means that for Walmart, the total market of all of their goods and services far surpasses its top two market competitors. As investors, you may ask why Costco is second to Walmart’s regarding sales. Well when we take a closer look, we see that “Walmart’s treatment of its customers and employees has not always been then best.
Some people may wonder how, with such low prices, Wal-Mart can sustain such a large profit margin. Well according to Jim Hightower, that answer lies within Wal-Mart’s workforce. Hightower believes that Wal-Mart is tricking its workers into thinking they are, “one big, happy family,” when in reality those workers are being exploited. According to Jim, Wal-Mart is diverting their workers from the actual issues such as, “fair wages, hiring discrimination, or unionization.” This is backed up in the 2004 documentary aired by PBS called, “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?”
From shared operating and advertising costs to exposure to diverse customer demands. However, the ability to respond to changing consumer needs and a combination of wholesaling and retailing operations led to the biggest and most noticeable effect, lower prices to consumers. The heart of the Wal-Mart strategy was to aggressively plan, organize and outthink their competitors by providing the best products, values, and prices. The Wal-Mart mission and vision statement “Saving people money so that they can live better.” (Wal-Mart, Inc., 2017)
Walmart was founded in the summer of 1962 by Kingfisher, Oklahoma native Sam Walton. Although Walton’s original vision for the store was relatively modest, the half century since its founding has seen Walmart morph into one of the biggest companies in the world. Today headed by one Doug McMillon, Walmart boasts more than 5000 stores in the United States of America alone and employs more than 1.5 million people. Walmart is undoubtedly an American institution, yet each Walmart store feels like its own little country. Walmart seems to have its own laws and customs and the people who shop their on a regular basis appear almost primitive in their behavior as they go about raiding the store’s shelves and wrestling with fellow customers for discount flat screen televisions and bulk packages of two-ply toilet paper.
Since the company was founded as a corner store, the company’s business plan has always emphasized on expect more, pay less brand promise that sets it apart from its chief rival, Walmart. Although, Walmart is known for its low prices and offers a large selection to its customers; it’s customer service is often found to be nonexistent. This
Wal-Mart has been one of the largest discount stores in the country in recent years surpassing all others with their discount prices and availability of multiple items and brands. In 2006, Wal-Mart Stores saw their performance fall to numbers never seen before since their beginning (Ferrell, Hirt, Ferrell, 2009). Increased competition from Kroger, Safeway, and Costco challenged Wal-Mart for the middle-income customers that they had long serviced. Top competitor, Target, emerged with a more appealing store presence and fashionable merchandise than that of Wal-Mart.
Walmart is known to put other stores out of business and left unheard of. While this may be good for them, this is bad for those employees who work or those businesses. These people use these jobs to take care of their families, and Walmart is taking that opportunity away by trying to compete for the areas customers. Ethan Wolff-man stated “A 44-year-old grocery store in North Carolina saw a 30% sales drop immediately when a nearby Walmart opened a couple of years ago, according to a Bloomberg News story. Whenever the mom-and-pop supermarket cut prices, the Walmart would match or undercut them.
Many people throughout the time of the largest retailers existence have argued that the negatives outweigh the positives. I beg to disagree, there are 1.4 million people employed by Walmart. That is approximately 1.7% of the US workforce. To put that in
For decades now, Walmart has been one of the most successful retailers in America. Walmart has become a household name in nearly every house in the country, even outside of this country, because of their low prices and vast selection. But despite all the popularity that has been built up with Walmart, its impact on the American economy and society has been mostly negative. As being one of the biggest box stores in the world, Walmart has left a huge trail of destruction in the way they treat their workers, their customers, small businesses, and local communities. To start off, as the largest retailer in the U.S., Walmart has buying power which they use to negotiate lower prices from their suppliers.
Records show due to Walmart is all around the place, gross domestic prices have gone up in an amount. Even though Walmart set up bad labor and gives bad opportunities to their employees, customers still thinks it is very convenient due to the low price. Since it is all around the corner, it is easy for people to walk in and walk out in any minute. The shopping carts are also a useful tool for customers to pick up their products, they also have small drive shopping carts for disables so they can even come to the store without any help. Nothing is better than Walmart in my opinion.
Wal-Mart Inc is found to be a public corporation in the USA that operates a chain of substantial, discount retail chains. It is one of the significant public companies, as per the 2008 Fortune Global 500. The organization was established in 1962 by Sam Walton that was further incorporated amid 1969 and was further listed on NYSE during 1972.Wal-Mart is the biggest private business and the biggest staple retailer in the United States. It additionally operates the retail distribution of the Sam's Club within North America(Corona, n.d.). The key components of the approach of Walmart to deal with the strategy in accordance with Sam Walton underscores building strong working associations with both employees and suppliers, staying alert and paying
Global citizenship is increasing more and more in popularity due to the global matters facing our world today. Global citizens aid the goals of gender equality and education, they aim to abolish social injustice and contribute to the progress and development of a fairer and just world. All of the worlds issues stem from human acts of breaches of The Human Rights, so it is vital that as a world community we become global citizens, eradicate our worlds complications and begin to respect one another as humans of the world. Global citizenship is essential in insuring the improvement and end goals of gender equality.
With profit as the goal and service as the process the company is at its core. According to Friedman (2005), Walmart’s greatest strength is its inventory control which is achieved through its effective distribution centers which he labels as “Walmart symphony with no finale; it just plays over and over” (Friedman,
Sam’s aggressiveness in business practices compelled the Wal-Mart to exit the fast food-industry. Irrespective of the feud, the firm grew and saw an expansion of Wal-Mart too many global markets, thus making the company become a sign of internationalization and the extension of the American way-of-life (Angeles, 2012). 2.0 Competitive Advantage Wal-Mart’s is among the establishment that have demonstrated themselves at creating new markets, rapidly going to up-and-coming markets and fundamentally altering the behaviours and favourites of clients in reputable markets. It is a company that known of introducing merchandise with alluring functionality or making