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Walmart global negative effects
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Kmart's main weakness was that it had an aspiration to be all things to all people – its dabblings in drug stores, home improvement stores, bookstores, cafeterias and specialty stores in the 1980s and early 1990s seemed to spread the company very thin. This focus on diversification is just one example of how the retailer has often not made the wisest choices when faced with a tight spot.
By the 1980s, just before the rise of Wal-Mart, Kmart had become complacent. It believed it would be the king of discount retailing, now and forever. It didn't perform an accurate SWOT analysis, but to be fair, who could have seen the rise of Wal-Mart to the position of the world's number-one retailer? Still, as Wal-Mart built new stores in town after town, supported by cutthroat pricing and solid logistics, Kmart's complacency would cost them. Part of the problem was that as Wal-Mart was pouring money into information technology (IT), Kmart's IT budget continued to shrink – not just once, but several years in a row. While Wal-Mart's logistics and supply chain management got sharper, Kmart's stagnated. And while Wal-Mart was able to squeeze more value out of its stores and its systems, Kmart lost ground. By the time Kmart had finally decided to start devoting more resources to IT, it was so far behind Wal-Mart that catching up would have been a near-impossible task without the recession in the early part of this decade. With the effects of the recession taken into account, Kmart instead was consigned to also-ran status among discount retailers.
Another problem was that Kmart did not correctly anticipate customer needs. For instance, let's say that Kmart buys a new style of shirt and stocks it in pink, yellow, green and blue. Further, let's say that the blue shirts sell out immediately; the store is left with inventory of the three other colors. Yet Kmart doesn't reorder the blue ones because 75 percent of its inventory is still unsold – it's still got plenty of that style of shirt to sell. Wal-Mart, meanwhile, would order a new shipment of blue shirts. Their model takes the customer into account, not the inventory – Wal-Mart understands that it's the color the customers want, not the style (in this case, anyway).
One of Kmart's biggest marketing miscues was the use of newspaper as its primary ad medium. Until about the 1980s, Kmart's primary form of advertising was flashy, expensive sales fliers that did not generate enough sales to offset their costs.
Kmart, contrarily, entered behind Wal-Mart as the second largest retailer in the United States after Sears’ reign. They, however, suffered a similar affliction to what felled Sears when Kmart ruled discount retail so heavily that they seemed almost unstoppable. However, with lack of solid knowledge on the business’ purpose and Wal-Mart as a strong competitor, there began a steep decline, along with Sears, that led to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (New York Times 2002).
Over one hundred years ago, an entrepreneur named Sebastian Spering Kresge opens his first retail store in 1899. The store was named Five-and-Dime and was located in downtown Detroit. The store was named Five-and-Dime because everything in the store was priced at either five cents or ten cents. This low price gained him a lot of customers and a lot of publicity. With this new found publicity, in 1912, he opened 85 more stores with annual sales of $10 million. As time went on, the prices have changed to $1 or less, but the business philosophy has remained the same. Around this time, the retail environment was getting very competitive, and the company needed to make some changes to keep up. In 1959, Kresge hired Harry B. Cunningham to become the president of the company. Under Cunningham leadership, the first Kmart store was opened in 1962 in Garden City, Michigan. In 1966, sales in 162 Kmart stores and Kresge stores topped the $1 billion mark and in 1968, the S. S. Kresge aired its first T.V. commercial. In 1976, Kresge made history by opening 271 Kmart stores in 1 year and becoming the first ever retailer to launch 17 million square feet of sales space in a single year. By 1977, nearly 95% of the S. S. Kresge sales were generated by Kmart so the company officially decided to change its name to Kmart Corporations. In 1991, Kmart opened the first supercenter in Medina, Ohio offering a full-service grocery area. In 1996, a complete redesign of Kmart was launched, changing its name to Big Kmart [or BigK] and in 1999, Kmart launch a new internet presence, named bluelight.com [now known as kmart.com]. In 2002, Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. (Corpor...
Kmart has many competitive and environmental forces impacting the industry today. As all organizations do some or these forces are opportunities for them while others are threats to the organization. A few of the forces are their rivals or competitors, the substitutes that can be used, and the new entrants into the market.
Following World War II, the concrete nature of imperialism, or the subjection of people or groups based on a social, economical, or racial hierarchy, was seemingly in decline. For instance, India and Pakistan had both gained their independence from Britain in 1947 (p.761), and the French, though unwillingly, gave up their colonies in Vietnam (p.754), but with the development of the Cold War there became a need to ideologically separate the free “First World”, which was made up of western Europe and the United States, from the communist “Second World”, which was primarily made up by the Soviet Union. This separation unintentionally formed yet another hierarchy, and further perpetuated imperialistic notions. While the Soviets attempted to continue political imperialism in surrounding states to form a political and economic buffer from democratic nations, which due to globalization, or the mass integration of cultural and economic practices, would have been necessary to accomplish, many nations, such as the U.S., who subscribed to these democratic beliefs still counterintuitively practiced imperialism in their attempts to forcefully liberate communist nations based on the notion that their free way of life was superior to other’s communist status quo. Therefore, imperialism continued to surface through the dualist political line drawn by the Cold War, but also later through a need to stay competitive culturally and economically in a growing global community in states both subject to past colonizing nations, as well as the nations who relinquished their control over them.
Wal-Mart's history is one of innovation, leadership and success. It started with a single store in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 and has grown to what is now the world's largest - and arguably, the most emulated - retailer. Some researchers refer to Wal-Mart as the industry trendsetter. Today, this retailing pioneer has annual revenues of over $100 billion, 3,000 stores and more than 750,000 employees worldwide. Wal-Mart operates each store, from the products it stocks, to the front-end equipment that helps speed checkout, with the same philosophy: provide everyday low prices and superior customer service. Lower prices also eliminate the expense of frequent sales promotions and sales are more predictable. Wal-Mart has invested heavily in its unique cross-docking inventory system. Cross docking has enabled Wal-Mart to achieve economies of scale which reduce its costs of sales. With this system, goods are continuously delivered to stores within 48 hours and often without having to inventory them. This allows Wal-Mart to replenish the shelves 4 times faster than its competition. Wal-Mart’s ability to replenish theirs shelves four times faster than its competition is just another advantage they have over competition. Wal-Mart leverages its buying power through purchasing in bulks and distributing the goods on it’s own. Wal-Mart guarantees everyday low prices and considers them the one stop shop.
In general merchandise retailing, Wal-Mart’s primary competitors are Target and Kmart. Retail superstores such as Circuit City and Bed, Bath, and Beyond, also provide retail competition. A survey found that the majority of respondents favored Wal-Mart over stores like Target and Kmart. Respondents claimed Wal-Mart offered lower prices, better variety and selection, and good quality. The needs of consumers is an important economic feature in all competitive environments. What attributes (price, variety, quality, etc.) prompt buyers to choose one retailer over another is very important in the competitive landscape.
This paper discusses the strategic problems that led to Kmart's poor performance. The first Kmart store was opened in Garden City, Michigan, in 1962 (the same year that Wal-Mart and Target began operations) by the S.S. Kresge Co., a five-and-dime chain that was founded at the turn of the 20th century in Detroit by Sebastian Spering Kresge. By the end of 1963 Kmart had 63 stores converted from Kresge's. By 1977, Kmart generated nearly all of Kresge's sales, and the company changed its name to Kmart Corp.
Everyday people try to find their place in society and by doing so they look at their social status in society. This individual paper will be discussing how one is given a social status in society and having this particular status may influence one to act or behave differently then they usually do to keep up with their status. Moreover will be looking particularly at the social status I hold with the role expectations that comes with the status, look closely at status and role in more detail and further more examples of situations faced with thus status.
Since brands depend on delivering a uniform, consistent product, global brands has traditionally adopted a “one size fits all” strategy (Crothers). Wal-Mart continues to expand internationally because it relates to other U.S global brands such as McDonalds. “ McDonalds grounded on one simple idea: provide desirable food and drink at low cost.”(Crothers 130). Wal-Mart’s strategy was almost the same to begin with. What they have in common is convenience and low cost. Its fast and quick just like McDonalds’. Customers at Wal-Mart can buy anything at one place and one time. It’s a superstore and everything you need is there. Customers do not need to leave to go to another store, which is why Wal-Mart is so successful. Smaller retail companies get replaced because they don’t have a chance with competing with Wal-Mart. A Wal-Mart store opening can destroy almost three local jobs for every two they cre...
The key issues for K-Mart strategies are finding the right cost level for an opportunity to be aggressive, and differentiating the product for consumer in terms of different consumer and different intangible product attributes. K-Mart and Sears should be combined with a new overall corporate competitive strategy using a cost focus. This may turn out to be the only sensible strategy, and the one which best describes the strategy adopted. Strategies of cost leadership and product differentiation are often described as if they were mutually exclusive you can either pursue one or the other, but not both.
In the SWOT analysis, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats will be discussed. These would include employees, competition, global marketing, and the repercussions that Sears has had to face when going against the Federal government.
One reason I choose social work as a career is because I have always known that I wanted to help others in some type of way. One summer I had the opportunity to work with Early Childhood Support and Services. While working with the program, I had the opportunity to see firsthand how so many families needed serious help but they were unable to receive it due to the state lack of funding and social workers. By seeing it firsthand, it broke my heart that so many people need much more help than others who abuse the
All the countries deemed as third world has had a history of colonial rule, most were exploited through colonialism, imperialism, neo colonialism etc. while the third world countries were annexed and had direct government of a first country through colonialism; it was seen as a cost by the imperial powers rather than a benefit and one that was unavoidable. Imperialism was creating the condition for industrial capitalism and a modern nation-state and would produce the same consequences as it had of the colonizers i.e. the development of the society’s productive force s and misery and degradation for its workers. It failed to complete the institution of private property, and drained the colonies of capital while enforcing the dependence on agriculture to supply the needs of the industrial world. Neo – colonialism appeared on the outside to grant the c...
Colonial Mentality theory grounds this study in recognition of colonialism’s lingering impact. Colonial Mentality theory attempts to shift the dominant ways in which people perceive the world (Young, 2003). Young (2003) stated, “Colonialism claims the right of all people on this earth to the same material and cultural well-being” (p.2). Young (2003) asserted that colonialism “names a politics and a philosophy of activism” that challenges the pervasive inequality in the world. In a different way, it resumes anti-colonial struggles of the past. Historically, American powers, deemed the west, subjected many regions, the non-west, to colonial and imperial rule. American powers felt it was their duty to colonize and felt justified in doing so: Colonial
This identifies the basic criteria of imperialism. This definition lets us know that imperialism involves a direct relationship between both the natives and the occupier, which as a result, causes pure economic struggles later. Most of the earlier empires of the world used this imperial technique with intentions to later occupy it for capital means in the future. Imperialism is closely related to the idea of colonialism, which will also assist in understanding why it was