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Wal-Mart Background

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Company background
Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer by annual sales and number of employees, tracing its history back to 1962 when it was first opened in US (guardian.co.uk). Wal-Mart operates in 27 countries worldwide under 69 different names including the acquisition of ASDA in the UK. Wal-Mart has reached $1bn in sales in 1980 and reached $414bn in 2012 and is currently employing 2.2 million employees worldwide.
Wal-Marts stores offer merchandise such as housewares, electronics, small appliances, clothing and groceries. It has 13.4% of the market share in the US (CNBC, 2012) and 17.3% (Guardian, 2012) in the UK, being second largest retailer in the country after Tesco.
Wal-Mart has been present in the UK after Wal-Mart acquired ASDA for £6.7bn in 1999. Now ASDA operates 528 stores and their clothing brand George has become UK's biggest clothing retailer pushing Primark out to the second place by market share.
Company's mission is to save people money so they can live better. Their main core value is to respect every individual and provide exceptional customer service. These values has helped Wal-Mart to compete globally and to gain leadership in the market since customers are more conscientious these days.

Generic strategy
There are numerous strategies that companies can use to compete against each other and try to maintain competitive advantage and most of them involve knowing customer needs and preferences. Entering a new market is always difficult, Porter's Generic strategy will show how Wal-Mart has settled in the UK and what approaches they have used to become one of the leaders in the market.
Porter's Generic strategy identifies three areas: differentiation, overall cost leadership and focus-that companies use to outperform their competition in the market. Overall cost leadership is to do with cost minimisation which can be achieved by

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