Wal-Mart Market Exit

Wal-Mart Market Exit

In Germany, Wal-Mart stores have not seen the success they have had in other parts of the world, this can be attributed to a large amount of mistakes they made when they decided to enter the German market. They didn’t do enough research on the market in Germany before entering and they had incorrectly assumed that since most European countries have a similar culture to America, that Germany would be a good market to expand in. The culture in Germany does not mesh well with American culture, and Wal-Mart didn’t take this into consideration, and didn’t take necessary steps to adapt to it. One large factor is that Germany is a very pro-union country, whereas Wal-Mart’s philosophy on unionizing was very different. Germany is also a very “green” country, and many customers did not like all the plastic waste such as shopping bags among other things in the store. Germany also tends to be very anti-American about name brand retail stores. In addition to that, Wal-Mart has their employees smile at every customer, in Germany this is not a normal thing and people find it weird when strangers smile at them, especially seemingly fake smiles.

In addition to the failure to properly adapt to German culture, they did not take competitors into consideration. In Germany there are many local low priced stores where customers feel more comfortable shopping, and where they can get better products because the local stores have a more specialized inventory with a better selection of goods. German people are also known to prefer shopping in more specialized stores and going to multiple stores per day than to go to one store and get everything they need.

All of these reasons among many others are a perfect example of why Wal-Mart should exit Germany, and how bad things can happen when Global companies cannot adapt to meet peoples needs. In order to succeed in international markets, Wal-Mart cannot always have an American approach.

Another country Wal-Mart would...