...I believe Walmart is a very successful company from a business standpoint. The company is the world's third largest public corporation list in 2012, the biggest private employer in the world with over two million employees, and is the largest retailer in the world. It has 8,500 stores in 15 countries and is the largest and most profitable retailer in the United States. However, from a moral standpoint Walmart may not be as successful as many may think. It has violated many human rights in some of its third world countries, as depicted in the film “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.” In the movie, they take an extremely biased stance against Walmart accusing the company of being inhumane, and not recognizing the rights of workers. It also went further and said that they attempt to cover up these actions, by teaching the workers to lie. The movie however fails to recognize that Walmart is not the only company to engage in such actions. In fact, shoe companies, such as Nike, and clothing companies, such as Hollister, are known to make their products in sweatshops. Some of the allegations brought up against Walmart proved to be true. On of their major attacks were, “The income of a Walmart associate is below the poverty level in America.” They continued by providing customer testimonies that stated that they wanted to quit but they could not afford too. Walmart should not be ridiculed for the amount of money they pay their associates. To get a job at Walmart you must be 16...
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...In Class Assignment 1 Walmart 4 P’s Critical Analysis Product Walmart provides a retail service to its customers that offers a wide range of products. The customer wants a convenient shopping experience matched with a low price. Walmart offers almost everything you may need in day to day life. They offer groceries, cosmetics, items for the home, gardening, tools, electronics and many more. The customer who goes to Walmart is looking for a one stop shop for all of their needs. The customer will drive to their local Walmart and hopefully have an easy shopping experience. They may go to pick up one item of go in and fulfill all of their needs. Walmart has large box stores that in almost all major cities and surrounding areas. Walmart is branded as a low cost quality store that has everything under one roof. Walmart also prides itself on its low prices of “rollbacks”. Walmart is different from its competitors because of the wide range of products it offers. No competitor offers the wide range of products at the low prices that Walmart has achieved and that is why they are growing. Walmart has managed to keep their prices so low by selling so much of everything. Walmart only receives a low profit margin on each product. Walmart employees offer services that will allow your shopping experience to run smoothly. The customer service staff directly effect how your shopping experience is and if you will return. Price and Pricing Strategy The value to the consumer...
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... Is Walmart good for America? Most everyone loves Walmart’s low prices. Walmart Super Centers are great for one stop shopping. A place that offers low prices must be a great place right? Maybe it isn’t such a great place. Low prices come at a cost to America. I do not think that Walmart good for America. Walmart purchases a lot of products from China, which furthers America’s trade deficit. Walmart contributes to the downfall of American manufacturers. Walmart also encourages businesses to take manufacturing overseas. Walmart imports an extreme amount of products from China. China’s prices are cheaper. The low cost of labor in China makes their products cheaper than American products. Chinese products allows Walmart to sell the products to consumers for a low cost. Walmart rakes in the profits because of the large mark-up they use. The United States currently has a major trade deficit. The trade deficit hurts our economy. We are buying more products from other countries than we are selling to them. Manufactures have to go to Walmart headquarters to negotiate prices. If Walmart disagrees with the terms, the manufactures lose them as clients. Rubbermaid once made and sold products to Walmart. The price of resin increased, and Rubbermaid had to increase their prices. Walmart refused to take the price increase. They stopped carrying Rubbermaid products. Rubbermaid was hurt drastically by Walmart’s decision. They later went out of business. If Walmart had took the price increase...
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...STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT MGMT E -5000 WALMART CASE ANALYSIS BY Indhu SEPTEMBER 19th, 2012 SWOT Analysis of Wal-Mart: (2008- 2010) EXTERNAL ANALYSIS: Significant findings on the PESTEL analysis were:(Refer Fig 1 ) * Socio Cultural factor: One of the most important concerns among consumers during that period was price. Since its establishment Walton focused on Everyday low prices (EDLP) and always geared towards the low- income groups of the society. This provided Walmart better opportunities and helped them gain a competitive advantage in the industry. * Demographic factor: Another opportunity facing the industry was that Consumers (working Mothers and other American workers) wanted ease of shopping (fast, efficient and one-stop shopping). Walmart provided its customers with what they want in the Walmart supercenters combined with its wholesale unit “Sam’s Club”. * Technological Factor: Heightening of Internet users (70% of the population) and more people were comfortable shopping online. This yielded both favorable (lower over head costs and convenience to the customers with wide choices of items and prices that were appealing) and unfavorable (Walmart has invested heavily on the infrastructure like the EDI links and POS systems) circumstances. * Economic Factor: Domestically the U.S market had a very slow growth. Although the economy was said to be in recession it favored the growth of the organization because it offered consumers commodities at a...
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...Johnson & Wales University Providence, Rhode Island College of Management Marketing Final Project Walmart MTKG 5500 Spring Term 2015 Professor Kim By: Andreas Ulrich, Chia-Yi Lin, Lauren Hahn and, Min Zhang May 13th, 2015 Abstract This document discusses how Walmart is one of the largest retailers in the world with how the mass production utilizes its resources to be cost effective in its selling price of all their products which makes the brand very well known in this aspect. Walmart has evolved since it first began the company and has changed their marketing strategy to better suit their customers’ interests and demographics. The company has become well known internationally for the brand image Walmart created for them and sets them aside from their competitors. Their excellent marketing strategy stems from the four P’s of price, product, distribution (place), and promotion. The pricing is low, but efficient from the cost control of the resources they obtain. The products walmart issue to the product range varies according to the needs of customers. The distribution is industrialized internationally and continues to expand. Walmart uses the differentiated strategy to target their customers. The organization utilizes product diversity, low- price strategy, e-commerce, long-term growth strategy, and technology innovation for future business. However, there are suggestions that were made for better expansion were product development, different approach...
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...proposition is based on offering Everyday Low Price. This is the core of Walmart’s Business Model, and the rest of the key features of Walmart’s Business Model are aligned to keep the everyday low price. This proposition implies that the customers do not need to wait for sales to have the best deal possible. Besides, not only the sells convenience is associated by providing the wide range of products and services to choose from, but also with one-stop is possible to make all the shopping needed, from groceries to pharmacy. Walmart’ customers save time and money Distribution channel To deliver its value proposition Walmart communicates with and reaches its customer segments with its distribution channels which are owned and direct, and brings higher margin. Walmart also is corresponding with its customers mainly through mass media and other ways which have a low cost, such as internet. Customer relationships Walmart establishes a customer relationship is based on self-service and automated and towards co-creation of some products once it is possible. Walmart tends to reach to the mass market toward mass customisation. Walmart’s customers can be divided into three groups: “brand aspirations”, people with low incomes who are obsessed with brand; “price-sensitive effluents” wealthier shoppers who love deals; and finally “value-price shoppers” who like low prices and cannot afford much more Strong buyer-supplier relationship Walmart has a strong buyer-supplier relationship...
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...What Walmart strategies led to success? These are the following Walmart strategies that led them to success. Low prices for consumers Walmart prides itself in having the lowest of prices. At times they are willing to take a short term loss to get the lowest prices. High efficiency standards from vendors In order to have such high efficiency standards, Walmart has innovated and come up with new practices in tracking and requires its vendors to use radio transmitters to make tracking faster and easier. Diversity in products and offerings Walmart has many offerings than just goods. These consist of a wholesale club (Sam’s Club) neighborhood markets, a pharmacy section, automotive and optical. This allows Walmart to be a one stop shop Creating a culture of customer service Sam Walton sought to win customers over by creating a friendly culture of inclusion, by creating10 foot rule, talking to customers and stressing customer service. Also by creating a culture of employee competence Close location There are Walmart’s almost everywhere. The average person lives 15 miles from a Walmart. By being so close, Walmart becomes a habit and it is convenient. Sam Walton’s role is a role of a charismatic visionary who created strategies policies and assisted in creating the culture of the company while he was alive. Beyond its stated intentions, Walmart plans to expand across the world and become fully irreplaceable. It would not make sense Walmart already provides goods...
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...Excellence - Walmart Jeanette Hester Columbia Southern University Since it’s first store opening in 1962, Walmart has become one of the largest retailers in the world. Part of the corporation’s success is based on providing the lowest prices to consumers. Walmart became known for their advertising slogan “Always Low Prices. Always”. However, competition would not stand still and allow Walmart to be the only source for low priced consumer goods. Walmart sought after a revitalized image – one that involved a new campaign. The new campaign Walmart wanted would be vital to reminding consumers that it was the store for all people. With the original tagline, “Always Low Prices. Always”, upper class consumers viewed the store as providing cheap products. As a means of attracting all consumers, Walmart wanted to include all classes in their new tagline. The result was “Save Money. Live Better”. The hope here was to attract the upper class by tying emotionally to their sense of living a better life. Walmart also hoped to lose their cheaper image by leaving behind the always low prices and keying in on saving money while living the life you expect. Walmart sought to emotionally connect to all consumers through a revitalized image and tagline. And, in doing so, they also wanted to keep its loyal customers by maintaining the price leader status in the retail market. To successfully achieve this, Walmart must stick to its roots of delivering quality, low priced...
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...Internal Environment Walmart: 1.Company Profile : * History : Walmart is a well known American company that operates retail stores including grocery stores, discount stores,wearhouse , clubs and combination of general merchandise store. It was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton along with his brother Bud in Rogers Arkansas. At the beginning he opened more stores in Arkansas but later he expanded walmart to Oklahoma and Missouri in 1968. In 1972 the company listed in the Newyork Stock Exchange. Walton group also introduced the Sam's Club Warehous store in Iowa ,Nibrasca ,Indianna in 1983. During 1980's the company rises considerably by reaching 25.8 billion dollars sales with almost 1,525 stores and 271,000 workers at the end of the decade. In 1990's walmart considered as a largest retailer of the nation and it continued the acheivement by opening more stores within an outside country. The company entered in Japan by buying 36% stake of Seiyu in 2002 and Walmart increased its stake about 67% in 2007.According to the fiscal year sale of Walmart is about 469.2 Billion in 2013 with 2.2 million workers worldwide and 11 thousand stores under 69 banners in 27 countries. * Scale of Operation: The strong market position is the main strength of Walmart with more then 400 billion dollars revenue and almost 11 thousand stores worldwide and consumer trust that differentiate walmart from its competitors. Walmart can also acheive higher profit because of its huge size and it has a strong...
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...| Walmart | | | | | Danielle S Holley | 11/28/2011 | | Firms choose from different business-level strategies in order to proposer in today’s markets. One of these being the Cost Leadership Strategy, an integrated set of actions taken to produce goods or services with features that are acceptable to customers at the lowest cost, in comparison to their competitors. Firms that chose to use this strategy must sell standardized goods and services which have to also include competitive levels of differentiation to the market’s regular customers. Cost leaders have to examine all support activities to find extra resources in order to cut production costs allowing them to maintain low costs for their customers. In any industry fixed and variable costs can cause companies to go out of business. Cost Leadership Strategy can put a strain on companies because they have to keep developing new technology that can support low cost goods and services (with differentiation) as well as low production costs to satisfy the needs of customers in the market place. Using this strategy effectively can earn firms above-average returns in spite of rivals in the industry. Having the low-cost position in an industry is valuable way to deal with competitors. The cost leader’s strategic position causes competitors to think twice before they compete on the basics of price and technology against the potential outcomes of such competition (Hitt). Walmart is known for its ability...
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...Basak Alemdag WALMART RETAIL ANALYSIS Business description Walmart is an American retail corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores in various countries. It is currently the largest retailer in US and in the world and also the world's third largest public corporation according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2012. Today, Walmart operates in 15 countries with a total of 8500 stores. It is well-known for its low-cost structure. Founded by Sam Walton in 1962, the company is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. Walmart is still a family-owned business, run by the Walton Family who has the 48% stake of the company. It also owns a chain of warehouse stores in North America, called “Sam's Club retail warehouses”. Walmart has a wide range of product categories under the following departments: Electronics, Auto&Tires, Apparel, PhotoCenter, Books, Sports/Outdoors, Home Improvement, Baby, Patio&Garden, Toys, Health, Pets, Grocery, Gifts, Beauty, Movies&VideoGames, Party/Occasion, Pharmacy, Jewelry. Customer identification Walmart essentially targets price-sensitive consumers as their regular customers. It offers overall medium-quality goods with lowest prices, and it is the main reason most customers shop from Walmart. The average US Walmart customer's income is below the national average, and analysts recently estimated that more than one-fifth of them lack a bank account, twice the national rate. A Walmart financial report...
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...Marketing Mix of Walmart Walmart ranks no.1 in the fortune 500 list for the second consecutive year with a revenue of 421,849.0 Million USD and made a profit of 16,389 Million USD during the FY2011. It was founded in the year 1962 by Sam Walton. Product Walmart is a multinational retailer; in short it has every product or a brand which a person could see in his day to day life. The broad range of product categories include movies, crafts, gifts, college essentials, Electronic items, home appliance, jewellery, photo centre, toys, outdoor living, funeral, grocery, video games etc Price Walmart business model doesn’t include manufacturing of any product; it procures products across the globe in large quantities in order to enjoy benefits of economies of scale. This makes price of Walmart to offer products at 15% lower price than other retailers. Walmart uses different pricing concepts to get focus of the customers and compel a purchasing behaviour through discount strategies. Sam Walton coined the term “Always lows prices” and “Everyday low prices”; according to this each product is offered at different discount prices based on the time and demand of the hour. The consumer electronics are offered at a very low price compared to other retailers. Place Walmart has more than 10,020 retail units which is spread across 28 countries and operates under 60 banners. It sells both by brick and mortar (traditional stores) and Brick and click (e-commerce) formats. The...
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...Week Four - Business Analysis Part I Before we conduct a SWOT analysis on Walmart, I want to give a brief history of the company. Walmart was founded in 1962 in Bentonville, Arkansas. Sam Walton’s vision was to achieve high volume of sales by maintaining sales price lower than competitors, which meant he had to reduce his profit margins. This multinational organization has been an example of growth, stability, profitability, and leadership in the retail business. The company is the second largest public corporation in America on the list of Fortune 500 in 2012 with 446,950 million dollars in revenue and $15,669 million dollars in profit (CNN Money, 2012). SWOT Analysis Strengths * The biggest private employer in the world (CNN Money, 2012). * Low price leader in the market since the beginning. * Second America’s largest corporation in 2012 (CNN Money, 2012). * One stop shop. Wide range of products under one roof. * Worldwide presence with more than 10,000 stores in 27 countries (Duke, 2012). * Leverage in the marketplace because of high purchasing volume. Weaknesses * Criticized of low paying jobs to its employees. * Limited grow opportunities to its employees. * Deficiency in the upscale market. * Adverse effects on small business in local community * Suppliers have to cut margins to sell their merchandise. * Monopolistic business. Opportunities * Pursue new international markets, especially in Asia and...
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...Japanese tends to prefer quality over low prices, which constrasts with Walmart core value as Wal mart's motto is Every Day Low Price. Also, Japan is a small country with limited spaces, which has several implications for Walmart. Small housings and apartment sizes, with high rent prices means that Japanese would need to minimize their purchases. Japanese are having trouble with lack of storage room to store purchases. For example, a typical apartment in Japan would be 1 room apartment with Living, Dining, and Kitchen area. A normal size of Japanese apartment are an average of only 27,55 sqm. Japanses likes to make several small purchases frequently. They minimize purchases, they would make their purchases several times a week, in small quantities. This means that stores would have to be readily available within reasonable distance, and bulk purchasing is discouraged. Compared to Walmart usual practice of centralized, big stores, with bulk purchasing to save costs, a neighborhood convenience store would be more suitable for the Japanese people. Japanese have high operating costs, especially because of the prices of rent and buildings in general. An average commercial land prices in Japan is 156,857 Yen (USD 2,017)/sqm, with average commercial land price in Tokyo reaching 1,551,400 Yen (USD 19,956)/sqm, followed by Osaka with average commercial land price of 493,700 Yen (USD 6,360)/sqm. I suppose it is very expensive compared to the U.S. They are also inability to apply original...
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...Walmart is expanding its presence on the Internet and the usage of mobile apps in stores. This summer Walmart will place lockers in some of the stores and customers will be able to pick up their orders from pre-assigned lockers 24 hours a day (Banjo 2013). The retail environment is changing; customers are using new technologies in every aspects of decision making from finding alternatives and comparing them to buying and using them. For almost every purchase customers start their shopping by an Internet search. They are also able to compare different retailers’ prices and check the availability in different retailers online. Technology has reduced the effort to find the cheapest and fastest options and by using smartphones you can do it everywhere even when you are standing by the item shelf in a brick and mortar shop and making decisions. On the other hand regulation is changing for online retailers. Online retailers are losing the advantage of tax free sales. Amazon as the biggest online retailer will be charging for tax in some states which cover more than half of the U.S. market (Gera 2013). It may change Amazon’s ability to offer competitive prices. For now as a physical retailer, Walmart offers a fast and lower price shopping experience to its customers. It has a broad assortment of merchandise and tries to be a one-stop shopping convenience. In 2011, Walmart added 8500 items or 11 percent in an average store (Walmart Broadening Product Assortment...
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