Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart’s Japan Strategy

Wal-Mart founded by Sam Walton in 1962. Wal-Mart Stores is not only the largest retailer in the world; it now also ranks as the largest corporation in the world. Wal-Mart has more than 1.2 million workers, making it the nation's largest nongovernmental employer. U.S. operations include 1,478 Wal-Mart discount stores, 1,471 Wal-Mart Supercenters, which are combined discount outlets and grocery stores. Its size, power, and low prices are what make Wal-Mart so successful.

Wal-Mart's "good concept" involved huge stores offering customers a wide variety of name-brand goods at deep discounts that were part of an "everyday low prices" strategy. Walton was able to keep prices low and still turn a profit through sales volume as well as an uncommon marketing strategy. Wal-Mart's advertising costs generally amounted to one-third that of other discount chains; most competitors were putting on sales and running from 50 to 100 advertising circulars per year, but Wal-Mart kept its prices low and ran only 12 promotions a year.

Wal-Mart Discount Stores are discount department stores with size varying from 51,000 square feet to 224,000 square feet with an average store covering about 102,000 square feet. They carry general merchandise and a selection of groceries.

Wal-Mart Supercenters are hypermarkets with size varying from 98,000 to 261,000 square feet with an average of about 197,000 square feet. These stock everything a Wal-Mart Discount Store does, and also include a full-service supermarket.

Wal-Mart has grown tremendously over the past few decades by making several wise acquisitions as well as having an unbeatable pricing strategy. In this paper, we will discuss Wal-Mart's history, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, business level strategy, structure, as well as make recommendations about how the company can increase their profits in the future.

I believe Wal-Mart has strong global management. They use their information...