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Walmart in South Africa

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Submitted By jslade35
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Walmart’s African Expansion
Case Study 2

Case Study Author: Karen Robson, Stefanie Beninger

Presented to: Dr. Doreen Sams

Analyst Name: Joe Slade

Date Submitted: September 28, 2014

Contents

Introduction 1
The Eclectic Paradigm and African Expansion 2
Conclusion 3
References: 4

Introduction

Walmart had humble beginnings. The first store was opened in Rogers Arkansas in 1962 by Sam Walton. Sam Walton wanted to have a store that provided as many items as possible but doing so in a low price way. By 1967 the Walton family owned 24 stores, ringing up $12.7 million in sales. During 1970, Walmart went public. In 1972 the company was listed on the New York Stock exchange. By 1980 the company had 276 stores in 11 states under the Wal-Mart banner. Through a joint venture with Cifra, a Mexican retail company, Walmart went global, opening a Sam’s Club in Mexico City in 199. This marked the first foray into global expansion (Walmart Corporate Site, 2014).

However, not all expansion into foreign countries went well. When Walmart decided to enter the German market in 1997, they did so by buying two retail store chains, Werkauf and Interspar. This was a difficult expansion process as neither one of these companies operated like Walmart. Walmart had issues with their distribution network and the German people were not used to shopping at a big box store like Walmart (Robson, Beninger, 2013).

This did not deter Walmart into the global expansion, they continued to expand into other countries and found success in Japan, and Chile (Walmart Corporate Site, 2014).

During late 2010 Walmart started negotiations with one of the leading retailers in South Africa, Massmart. While the bulk of Massmart’s stores were in South Africa, they did own 313 wholesale and retail stores in 13 African countries (Robson, Beninger 2013).

South

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