Wal-Mart

21st Century Strategies of Wal-Mart

21st Century Strategies of Wal-Mart

Thesis Statement

“Wal-Mart is located between two worlds: the world of Sam Walton built the "everyday low price offer" through the adoption of effective solutions, based on information technology and the new global market space

Introduction

Sam Walton opened his first retail store in large area in 1962 under the name of Wal-Mart Discount City. In 1969 he incorporated his company, Wal-Mart Inc. and constructed its headquarters and its first distribution center in Bentonville, Arkansas. Wal-Mart took 30 years to mesh the area of logistics platforms from which it launched a systematic conquest of local markets. The company has passed the milestone of one billion dollars in sales per year in 1980, one billion per month in 1986, and one billion a week in 1992. It is now more than five billion U.S. dollars of sales per week. The company's strength is impressive sales are higher than those of its direct competitors combined, and finally the U.S., its sales are 7.5% of all those in the retail trade (Nelson, 2006).

Discussion

Strategic Choices

Wal-Mart is a competitive organization and probably the global leader in retail industry. This is the result of its effective use of its strengths to deal with threats, weaknesses, ability to avail opportunities (Nelson, 2006).

Wal-Mart creates significant advantages through its systems which manage its warehouses and stores. Initially, Wal-Mart chose locations without direct competitions from large chains (rural areas). In addition, Wal-Mart created a culture of supporting values, skills, technologies, supplier-customer relationship, HR and approaches to motivation that could not be easily copied by other firms (Ricky, 2009).

Wal-Mart also faces responsibility to take initiatives which are favorable to the environment. There is an increased emphasis on green practices due to which, Wal-Mart needs to take initiatives to deal with the changing environment (Keara, 2011).

Porter's Four Generic Strategies

Wal-Mart always strives to provide quality products at an everyday low price and with extended customer service. In order to achieve this, they have adopted a series of strategies which range from loyalty programs for customers to e-tailing. Some of the principal strategies include building divisions, which include smaller stores built in small communities with a population of less than 5000 people; this strategy allows Wal-Mart to give particular attention to customers in smaller markets in rural America. Another division is the Sam's Club which is basically a membership only cash and carry operations, in which only wholesale operations are carried out. Customers have to pay a membership fee to be a part of the club in which they get to buy goods in bulk. Supercenters are another division in Wal-Mart whereby groceries, are combined with general merchandise “giving customers a one-stop shopping experience” this “one-stop” convenience has appealed to a large number of customers thereby making the supercenters to become one of the most important retail concepts on the landscape. The International division has essentially allowed the company to maintain a strategic, competitive focus on global positioning (Ricky, 2009).

Another Strategy adopted by the company is ...