Costco's Organizational Culture

I. Overview

According to the 2016 Global Powers of Retailing reports Costco is the second largest retail store, ranking behind Walmart.

1983, Costco opened its first warehouse store in Seattle, Washington as PriceCostco. Costco started with a partnership with Price Club opening multiple locations throughout the United States. After 10 years with the partnership, Costco made the decision to to run their warehouses in different way with developing memberships and the changing the name to what we all know and love started Costco Warehouse.

Through the years Costco has grown to become one of the top retailers in the world from starting with 1 location in Seattle, WA to 746 locations in 11 different countries. The company has evolved out side of

Having a strong culture within a company will build the employees identity, retention and work ethic (Alton, 2017). Employees for the company are willing to go the extra mile to make every customers experience magical. Costco has mastered this in a way that any other company has. Since the company requires memberships to enter and purchase at the facility it is important that the company provides quality product and the experience, give them the total package and the want to continue to come every day, week and month. The culture also bleeds into how the company compensates their employees. To compete with the other top retailers Costco offers the best benefit packages. This helps attract the best talent to run their

Costco is placed within multiple countries and not one Costco is the same. To be successful in different countries with their different cultures, it is necessary that each store offers what is needed there. For example, in Mexico the typical queso fresco is popular there and selling quick but will it work in China? Costco needs to adapt to their consumers. Costco is ready to expand and has dominated the suburbs of America but are looking to bleed into the cities. Since Costco is a typical buy in bulk warehouse they tend to place stores where customers have easy access to cars and transportation. However, to stay current and compete with they other supermarket stores like Walmart they are wanting to set up shop in the inner New York city walls. But how will this work? When the average new Yorker purchases groceries as what is needed at the time and not for the whole month. Opening up in New York Cities will need to be addressed a little differently than the typical opening in the