Preview

Wal Mart Company Overview Essay Example

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1775 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Wal Mart Company Overview Essay Example
"Basic History Overview"

Wal-Mart's history is one of innovation, leadership and success. It started with a single store in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 and has grown to what is now the world's largest - and arguably, the most emulated - retailer. Some researchers refer to Wal-Mart as the industry trendsetter. Today, this retailing pioneer has annual revenues of over $100 billion, 3,000 stores and more than 750,000 employees worldwide. Wal-Mart operates each store, from the products it stocks, to the front-end equipment that helps speed checkout, with the same philosophy: provide everyday low prices and superior customer service. Lower prices also eliminate the expense of frequent sales promotions and sales are more predictable. Wal-Mart has invested heavily in its unique cross-docking inventory system. Cross docking has enabled Wal-Mart to achieve economies of scale which reduce its costs of sales. With this system, goods are continuously delivered to stores within 48 hours and often without having to inventory them. This allows Wal-Mart to replenish the shelves 4 times faster than its competition. Wal-Mart's ability to replenish theirs shelves four times faster than its competition is just another advantage they have over competition. Wal-Mart leverages its buying power through purchasing in bulks and distributing the goods on it's own. Wal-Mart guarantees everyday low prices and considers them the one stop shop.

Case Overview

The case study starts off with quotes from Wal-Mart executives with their thoughts of how employees/consumers should feel about the arguably most innovative retailer. "Wal-Mart employees who do not think globally are working for the wrong company." "Wal-Mart must think and act as if it's a global company. Otherwise, it cannot grow enough in the United States to maintain its stock price. It needs to be in South America. It needs to be in Asia. It needs to be in Europe." Wal-Mart has taken their mind and cash over the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Local Business Bus/210

    • 319 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The first component of Wal-Mart is business commerce. Business commerce is when Wal-Mart exchange good and services with other businesses. For example, Wal-Mart has a hair salon service; I love to get my hair done every other week. Also, many Wal-Marts provide banking services and some fast food services. Wal-Mart has stock trades also. Another main component of Wal-Mart is business occupation. Business occupation is the acquired set of specialized skills and abilities that allows Wal-Mart to create valuable goods and services. When my husband started at Wal-Mart he had to undergo several trainings to ensure that he understands the business and also that he provides customers with excellent services. Wal-Mart provides thorough training to its employees so that they can keep the customers coming back. Customers always value great customer service. I think this is one way Wal-Mart remains ahead of its competitors. The last main component of Wal-Mart is business organization. Business organization is the system of task and authority relationship which coordinates and controls the interactions between people so that they work toward a common goal. Wal-Mart’s common goal is to provide low prices. They try to provide lower prices than their competitors. They are about saving their customers money. They have reduced the costs of their retail and other products in the store. There are many Wal-Marts around the world and they provide the same services in all of them. I love Wal-Mart and I agree that they have prices lower than many other retailers. I definitely agree with their slogan, it is so true. “Save money, Live better”.…

    • 319 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Wal-Mart is a giant of the retailing industry yet is not immune to the pressures of globalized trade, supply, and competition. Wal-Mart’s profit sustainability is always ‘in doubt’ unless it continues to fight off various competitive conglomerates or large size retailers such as Amazon and Target. Mergers on the scale of Wal-Mart are rare yet the marketplace shifts based on the continued expansion of physical and online retailers like Amazon and Amazon’s many partner/provider organizations. To stay ahead of the various operational and governmental threats, Wal-Mart’s focus is on maintaining their low cost…

    • 1894 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    JC Penney Co. Incorporated was founded in 1902 in Kemmerer, Wyoming by James Cash Penney and William Henry McManus. Today JC Penney offers a range of family apparel, jewelry, shoes, accessories, and home furnishing products through a chain of department stores and their company website. JC Penney, headquartered in Plano, TX, operates in the United States and Puerto Rico, with a total of 1,108 stores. JC Penney also offers its products through a catalog channel. Each channel serves the same type of customers and provides generally the same merchandise mix. JC Penney’s business is conducted through a single segment, but revenues are reported by product category. In addition to their product categories, the stores offer a salon, optical, portrait photography, and custom decorating services. JC Penney receives merchandise from over 3,500 suppliers, both domestic and foreign. The company operates buying and quality assurance inspection offices in 19 countries.…

    • 3485 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mara 466 Wal-Mart

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In the modern era of business operations the store founded by the Walton family in Bentonville Arkansas has grown into the largest company in the world. From its small beginnings it has grown into the behemoth of the retail industry and defined the new way of doing business worldwide. Wal-Mart’s continued success can be contributed to their business plan, distribution system, HR management, product diversity, price, and negotiating power with manufacturers. They have essentially written their own playbook on how to maximize the profitability of every store, every product and every worker.…

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This has highlighted and broadened their need to succeed and remain at the top in the retail industry. Though closely marked by online marketers like Amazon and eBay, Wal-Mart’s marketing strategy consists of flooding the market with their presence and this is frightening for companies who find Wal-Mart’s physical presence and business practices disturbing. With such a substantial spread of many outlets, extremely reasonable pricing, and a huge market share, their marketing strategy has necessitated a global takeover of all the appropriate…

    • 4149 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Wal Mart Supply Chain

    • 310 Words
    • 2 Pages

    2. Wal-Marts supply chain management system has provided higher levels of product availability and lower merchandise acquisition and transportation costs by using efficient techniques. Wal-Mart uses a Just in Time inventory system. This is when they receive less-inventory on a more frequent basis then traditional inventory systems. This leads to less lead times and less carrying cost as there is less inventory on hand. They receive a smaller amount of inventory and when need they purchase new loads which will come quickly. They also use cross docking which means that the inventory reaches the trucks and are immediately bound for stores. This is a much more efficient process and once again acquires less carrying cost for inventory. These techniques make Wal-Mart a leading innovator when it comes to efficient and effective supply chain…

    • 310 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wal-Mart Research Paper

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the first year of operation, sales at Wal-Mart stores were US $975,000. Ten years later, when the company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972, revenues had reached US $78million. The public listing provided the company with the resources to finance a more rapid expansion, and by 1979 sales had surpassed US $1 billion. The unbelievable growth was unstoppable. In 1990, the company topped the list of major retailers in the US. And five years later, Wal-Mart stores could be found in all 50 American states, in Mexico and Canada. In 2002 it became the world’s largest company in terms of sales. On January 31st 2005, Wal-Mart Stores reported net sales of US $285 billion, and had a presence in nine countries with 5,289 stores and 1.6 million employees worldwide. Wal-Mart offered multiple store purchasing options that included discount stores, supercentres, warehouse stores and neighborhood markets. Wal-Mart not only the largest company in the world, but also the most admired company in the US according to Fortune magazine. (Farhoomand, 2005)…

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As the largest retailer in history, it’s no surprise that Walmart is the target of both vicious attacks and effusive praise. According to its own website, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. operates more than 8,000 stores, employs more than 2.1 million people, and sells more than $400 billion worth of goods in every year. Though this bulk intimidates those who fear for the viability of “mom and pop” retailers, Walmart’s great strength is that it devotes its considerable power to American consumers. Its size enables it to provide services that other retailers cannot, and it has deservedly become an integral part of the modern American economy.…

    • 689 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Already very early did Wal-Mart realize that logistic was a key factor to its success. By investing very early in state of the art information technology (IT) which tracked every item in every Wal-Mart store, the company was able to shrank inventory-taking lags from several months in the 1950s to near real time in the 1990s. Their core IT competence is the ability to track every item and share this information with their suppliers. Additionally to this feature Wal-Mart possesses its own distribution centers (84 in the US only) which operate together with the discount stores on basis of a hub and spores system. Furthermore did Wal-Mart establish the “cross-docking” system. This system allows the transfer of merchandise directly from inbound trucks to store-bound trucks without storing goods inside the distribution centers. With this system and the above mentioned IT systems, Wal-Mart is able to minimize the time its goods are stored inside the distribution centers and the goods needed inside its discount stores are nearly delivered just in time.…

    • 886 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer. They are the leading private employer with over 2 million employees. Currently, there are 8,500 stores, across 15 countries. Wal-Mart has a massive economic impact in the U.S and other countries of operation. I will argue that Wal-Mart’s disregard for moral business practices through the lack of their social responsibility has had a negative consequence. Their only interest seems to be in making a significant profit at the cost of sacrificing good ethical moral business practices. I will provide evidence for this belief by showing how “everyday low-prices” are effecting employees, customers, taxpayers, and other countries. I will show the reason for the need for change in their business. Wal-Mart has a powerful impact on the countries that they operate in.…

    • 2491 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The globalization of Wal-Mart began in 1991 in Mexico. The economy was starting to affect Wal-Mart’s business and they had to figure out a way to bring the profit up before business was lost. They decided to branch out and open a store in Mexico and Wal-Mart currently has stores in eleven countries (Vijay Govindarajan and Anil K. Gupta 2002). By 1999, Wal-Mart had more than 130,000 employees working in 729 facilities outside the United States (Vijay Govindarajan and Anil K. Gupta 2002). There were many factors that played into Wal-Marts decision to globalize. The first being that it had already saturated most of the domestic markets, and the United States only accounts for just over four percent of the world’s…

    • 1610 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Walmart History Essay

    • 1951 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is an international discount department store chain operating in many towns and cities in multiple countries. Wal-Mart’s founder, Samuel Walton, “decided that small-town populations would welcome, and make profitable, large discount shopping stores” (Healy 493).Therefore, he started to build the largest discount department stores and opened the first Wal-Mart discount store in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 (Healy 493). Wal-Mart sells many different kinds of products, such as clothes, food, books, furniture, and many more. Wal-Mart has been growing very fast. “In 1979, there were 276 Wal-Mart stores in 11 states. Sales had gone from $44 million in 1970 to $1.25 billion in 1979. Wal-Mart became the fastest…

    • 1951 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Walmart is the largest brick-and- mortar retailer in the world. In 2014 Walmart had 11,000 retail units under 71 banners in 27 countries. Walmart employs around 2.2 million associates around the globe with 1.3 million just in the U.S. alone. ‘’In the fiscal year ending January 31, 2015 Walmart delivered net sales of more than $288 billion, an increase of 3.1 percent ‘’ (Walmart 2015 Annual Report pg .7). Walmart delivered ‘’consolidated net sales growth of $482.2 Billion which allowed Walmart to return $7.2 Billion to the shareholders through dividends and share purchases’’ (Soni, P. Market Realist, 2015 pg.1). Walmart is a growing corporation…

    • 825 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Walmart grew in large part by leveraging information systems to an extent never before seen in the retail industry. Technology tightly coordinates the Walmart value chain from tip to tail, while these systems also deliver a mineable data asset that is unmatched in U.S. retail. Tight inventory management is legendary at Walmart through its just-in-time techniques that allow the firm to boast one of the best supply chains in the world. Walmart has not only transformed its own supply chain, but also influenced how vendors throughout the world operate because the company has the economic clout to request changes from its vendor partners and to receive them.…

    • 3997 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Research Paper

    • 6044 Words
    • 25 Pages

    In the competitive retail market today, Wal-Mart has developed an influential brand known by many consumers worldwide. Throughout the years, the large corporation has developed a very attractive slogan to the public while at the same time implementing discount stores that offer very low prices, which attracts the public even more. For this reason, in spite of the challenging impact of customer’s time due to the excessive checkout lines, to the limited available workers; Wal-Mart’s low costs of their products continues to flourish their business. In the market today, Wal-Mart remains #1 amongst the retail stores of the Fortune 500 companies! The company’s mission statement is “We work for you. We think of ourselves as buyers for our customers, and we apply our considerable strengths to get the best value for you. We’ve built Wal-Mart by acting on behalf of our customers, and that concept continues to propel us. We’re working hard to make our customers’ shopping easy” (Jones & George, 2011). With this mission statement in mind, Wal-Mart management has had to create and plan different…

    • 6044 Words
    • 25 Pages
    Powerful Essays