Wal-Mart

[Name of the Institute]

Wal-Mart

Introduction

When self-service and discounts have become a big business in the 60's, Sam Walton defined the rules and explained them persistently to their employees, called associates. And there was a new and powerful paradigm. Only a few years of their early stages, the average discount stores were almost doubled and tripled their sales. In 1992, the year of the death of Sam Walton, Wal-Mart had 1,900 superstores with over 430,000 employees. Sales reached 55 billion dollars with earnings close to two billion. Thus was formed the world's largest hypermarket. In 1985, Forbes revealed that Sam Walton was the richest man in America (Murphy, 2008). And Wal-Mart was praised for being one of the best-managed companies in the U.S.

With Wal-Mart the power shifted from manufacturers to distribution channels. Then the same pattern was seen with Home Depot and Toys "R" Us. A similar change could occur with CarMax or Amazon.com in the near future. Just as McDonald's, Toyota and others have become inefficient competitive advantage by repairing weak links in their value chain, Wal-Mart settled the link forming a partnership with its largest supplier; "Procter & Gamble" to align goals coordinate and share information. No supplier could do business with those companies, unless they wanted to become a strong link, and for some competitors, represented an opportunity to fill the space (Soderquist, 2005). Firms that want to do business with Wal-Mart had to change their business models instrument and improve systems, electronic data interchange and delivery system "just in time."

Sam Walton learned that large stores could succeed in cities with fewer than 5000 inhabitants, if they offered any incentives. One of the key elements in the success of Wal-Mart has been the lack of competition in small rural towns. The fate of Wal-Mart happy was to be underestimated.

Analysis

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