Situation Analysis Of Walmart

1009 Words5 Pages
I. Introduction Walmart Stores, Inc. - the American corporation which was established in 1962, is well-know for the globe’s largest multinational retailer (Walmart 2016). Walmart owns a chain of grocery stores, discount department stores and hypermarkets with about 11,500 retail stores over 28 countries. In 1998, Walmart entered Germany with the acquisition of Wertkauf and Interspar chain (Louisa 2006). Despite having the strongest economy in Europe and the third largest retail market in the world, Germany was not an ideal place for Walmart to achieve its ambition (Knorr and Andt 2003). After nearly a decade struggling to grow, Walmart decided to pull out of German market in 2006 with the loss of one billion dollars (Mark 2006). This report will be based on the International Business theories to investigate relevant problems, which contributed to Walmart’s failure in German market, including the lack of understanding customers’s shopping habits and the inapropriate international human resource mangement method. Then, possible recommendations will be given to alleviate the issues. II. Situation Analysis and Theoretical Application 1. Lack of understanding local customers’ shopping habit cultures. Using a suitable strategy to adapt and match the host nation’s culture is one of the most difficult challenges that many multinational enterprises have to overcome (Alphonse 2014). According to Harzing test based on Barlett & Ghosal’s foreign market entry theory (1999), while