Competitive Strategies and Government Policies of Wal-Mart

Competitive Strategies and Government Policies of Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is an international company with stores in all states in the United States and in 14 other countries. The corporation began with one tiny store in Arkansas and has meanwhile inflated into the largest-earning company in the world. It has the biggest workforce of any non-government organization in the world. It has created its name and developed its consumer base on the foundation of affordable prices. Wal-Mart has constructed its corporation on charging not as much for its merchandise than anyone else in the retail industry. Wal-Mart stores vary depending on the location. Wal-Mart's are retail stores that sell a wide range of merchandise as well as an assortment of grocery items. Supercenters have a wide-ranging merchandise side and a grocery side. Neighborhood Markets are normally grocery stores with a lesser assortment of general merchandise items.

Wal-Mart is always ready to expand and practiced vertical merger when used to be just one store where is a place where customers buy consumer goods but today the company also experiments with horizontal merger. Wal-Mart achieves its competitive advantage through employee engagement and internal efficiency costs. With Wal-Mart shifted power 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. McDonald's, Toyota and others have become inefficient competitive advantage by repairing weak links in the value chain, Wal-Mart settled the link forming a partnership with its largest supplier, "Procter & Gamble", to align objectives, coordinate and share information. No provider 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. Firms that wanted to do business with Wal-Mart had to change their business models improvements in systems, electronic data interchange and delivery "just in time."

Strategies with their suppliers are more productive way of doing business because their purchasing power is very large compared to other competitors. Wal-Mart maintains an aggressive purchase which requires its suppliers continue its pattern of providing products with the lowest prices possible. This will allow Wal-Mart to be sold at lower prices than its competitors which translates to a greater flow of customers to its stores, increased sales volume and therefore profits equally bulky. In its stores, marketing is always present in which they present products and strategically placed in the store so that the goods that the customer is not looking for what you have as an alternative when you visit the store. Similarly makes alliances with suppliers to achieve special packaging sizes for their stores.

Global competition directly impacts the way Wal-Mart does business internationally. Other global companies compete for the same customer business as Wal-Mart. The international competition for consumer attention principally occurs in the e-commerce arena that is a Wal-Mart forte. Wal-Mart offers customers a convenient all-inclusive website listing merchandise and products offered in brick-and-mortar stores as well as some items are offered only online. The transaction is considerably accelerated by the availability and convenience of the Internet. The Internet allows purchases to occur more quickly than with the common store or phone sale method. Target, one of Wal-Mart's major competitors, also offers a website is utilized by international consumers. This additional competition, from a major competitor within the same industry, compels Wal-Mart to maintain low prices while providing a quality customer experience and quality merchandise.

In the United States, Wal-Mart built up a competitive advantage by leveraging its supply chain innovations and evolved human resources policies. Wal-Mart has one of the most efficient distribution systems in the world and returns these internal savings back to the consumer. Wal-Mart was also a pioneer in stock ownership for it employees, which allows employees to "own" a portion of the company by purchasing share of stock through its benefits program. These ground-breaking practices improved Wal-Mart's productivity and drove down operating costs. These savings were further passed on to the customer and manifest themselves in low everyday prices. The strategy allowed Wal-Mart to gain substantial market share in general merchandising. Wal-Mart is continuing to employ a similar strategy toward developing its food retailing business, where it is garnering market share from established supermarket chains worldwide.

In the 1990s, Wal-Mart sales reached a saturation point domestically and the company turned to international sales for growth. In 1991, Wal-Mart opened in Mexico as a joint venture with Mexico's largest retailer, Cifera. Critics predicted that Wal-Mart would fail in its pursuit of international marketing citing differences in business practices, human resources policies, insufficient supply chain infrastructure, etc. Indeed, Wal-Mart's initial excursion into Mexico was strewn with challenges. However, Wal-Mart learned from its mistakes and modified its business model and operations better to adapt to Mexican practices. In 1998, Wal-Mart purchased additional shares of Cifera stock and attained a controlling interest in the company. By 2002, Wal-Mart was double the size of its nearest competitor with 600 stores and revenues in excess of $600 billion.

As the 21st century unfolded, Wal-Mart progressively entered into web-based retail marketing. Since integrating the Internet into its consumer retail business, Wal-Mart must continuously focus on ferreting out quality merchandise to offer at a low price. This way, Wal-Mart can continue to provide customers with the cheapest price. If Wal-Mart can accomplish this mission, Wal-Mart will continue to lead its competition, such as Kmart and Target, in market share of the global retail industry.

Wal-Mart has been trying to use the federal government to their advantage over the past several years from going green to increasing wages. Eight years ago Wal-Mart began the transformation of going green. They have reduced waste, packaging, and improved fuel efficiency on transportation. Wal-Mart took the plunge into the green reform Dolan (2011), "on a belief that sustainable can be good... for the bottom line." (para. 2)

Wal-Mart was ranked in the top three in the Greener Power Partnership of retailers in 2011 by the Environmental Protection

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