Wal Mart

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Wal-Mart Case Analysis

Wal-Mart Stockholder

Wal-Mart is the largest retail store in the United States today and it has remained that way for several decades now . In to stay ahead of the competition Wal-Mart employs different kinds of strategies and campaigns . One of its strategies is to dominate the retail market through its philosophy - Everyday Low Prices ' The essence is this philosophy is to cut the price of an item to the minimum , lower the markup and earn profit on the increased volume of

sales (Patrick Hayden Seung Lee , and Kate McMahon Mike Pereira 4 . Though this has generated a huge amount of profits for its shareholders , the company has to sacrifice two things : the quality of their products and the welfare of its employees (Scott Dalgleish 1

This company philosophy has been a success for Wal-Mart . According to Jim Hightower , the Waltons , owners of Wal-Mart are some of the richest people in the world . S . Robson Walton is ranked by London 's Rich List 2001 ' as the wealthiest human on the planet having more than 65 billion surpassing Bill Gates (1 ) This does not mean that things will continue the way they are . In the future , the public will eventually discover that sacrificing quality over cost is not worth the penny they save from buying at Wal-Mart . With all the bad publicity and reputation Wal-Mart has earned because of this company policy time will come that the public may no longer patronize Wal-Mart 's retail stores which may cause tremendous losses for its existing and future stockholders According to Allen Long , Wal-Mart 's stocks has fallen by 11 over the last five years perhaps due to the bad publicity the company has been getting over the years (2 ) If the company seeks to avoid this disaster , it must first give respect to its hundreds of thousands of employees who work for them . They must be given adequate wages health-care benefits and must comply with existing labor laws . As the larges retail store in the United States , it is possible for the company to give proper wages and benefits to its employees while at the same time maintaining the price of its products low

Foreign Supplier

Initially , Wal-Mart advertised its Buy American ' campaign . But over time it became clear that this was just an advertising gimmick rather than a company policy . As it is important for Wal-Mart to maintain its prices very low , they had to turn to foreign suppliers which can deliver to them goods at lower prices compared to their US-based suppliers According to Jim Hightower , Wal-Mart is the largest importer of Chinese-made products in the world , buying 10 billion worth of merchandise from several thousand Chinese factories (2 ) For the foreign suppliers , it became necessary to resort to different means in to meet the price requirements of Wal-Mart . Some factories in Bangladesh had to employ child labor to keep its production costs down . Some companies have failed to comply with certain...