Wal-Mart’s philosophy has always been to provide everyday low prices and superior customer service. But this philosophy might have stared potential customers away from Wal-Mart. Many people, including myself, have the misconception that Wal-Mart only sells necessities that the average working class family can afford. An extreme eye opener for me was a recent television commercial by Wal-Mart. I saw that they also sold flat panel televisions, which is considered a luxury item for any social class. After going to their website to see what other luxury items Wal-Mart sold I was amazed at the number of items I found that were not the necessities which I stereotyped them selling. Wal-Mart has to change the public’s opinion of the items that they sell and the types of people that it has in mind of serving.
Sam Walton was the shrewd businessman behind the world's largest retailer. After working his way through the University of Missouri as a newspaper delivery boy, he got a job in Des Moines, Iowa as a management trainee for J.C. Penny at a salary of $75 a month. Walton borrowed some money from his father-in-law and opened a variety store after serving as an Army captain in World War II. A chain of drugstores followed. He went into business with his brother Bud, and by 1960, the Waltons' 15 stores were taking in $1.4 million a year. But Walton soon saw a challenging new competitor arise in the discount store. The Walton brothers opened their first Wal-Mart in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. Specializing in name brands at low prices, the chain of Wal-Mart stores sprang up across rural America.
Wal-Mart’s sales grew to $26 billion by 1989, compared to $1 billion in 1980. By 1990, Wal-Mart was the largest U.S.
Wal-Mart was conceived and founded by Sam Walton in 1962, at Rogers, Arkansas. Sam Walton started with just a few small variety stores, funded with borrowed money. His goal was to provide affordable products to the public to make life easier. After his success with the first few stores, Sam Walton borrowed more money to build more stores, creating the Wal-Mart empire as we see it today. The retail giant proves its stoic presence in our lives with its $401 billion sales for fiscal year 2009.
Born on March 29, 1918 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, Sam Walton was said to have excelled at anything he set his mind to (Walton & Huey, 14). President of the student body in high school as well as college at the University of Missouri, where he majored in business, Walton and his natural ambition gained him success in virtually all of his ventures; during the Great Depression, Walton had managed a small newspaper business, making an impressive four to five thousand dollars per year. It leaves little to wonder about how exactly Wal-Mart became such a financially successful industry.
Sam Walton was born on March 29, 1918 to Thomas Gibson and Nancy Lee Walton near Kingfisher, Oklahoma. They lived on a small farm but when that was proven non-profitable they moved out of Oklahoma to many towns across Missouri. Sam Walton was the starting quarterback for his football team and was an honors student. He attended the University of Missouri, where he majored in Economics. After a few setbacks Sam decided he wanted to own his own department store. His dream came a reality in the fall of 1945 when he purchased a store in Newport, Missouri with the help of his father-in-law.
The first Walmart was opened in Rogers, Arkansas in the year 1962 by a 44-year-old man by the name of Sam Walton. When he first envisioned Walmart, Walton believed that a successful business could be built around offering lower prices and great service. Despite his retail rivals laughing at his supposedly unsustainable business model, the company became hugely successful, and its success exceeded even Walton's expectations. The company went public in 1970, and the proceeds financed a steady expansion of the business. Today, Walmart is the largest retailer in the world, as it has 8,500 stores spread across 15 countries and annual revenues of $400 billion dollars. Moreover, Walmart is the
A prior market firm used by Wal-mart (GSD&M) warned Wal-mart of the public image issues they were facing and had not addressed, even though they had been advised of them for over two years. GSD&M wrote in one review to the company that “sadly, after two years of empty rhetoric and ineffective publicity stunts, we now know that Wal-Mart has not only needlessly hurt its Associates and their families, but has pointlessly hurt the image and success that Sam Walton built.” (wakeupWalMart.com, 2007). Wal-mart has acted in a manner that blends with the theory of egoism. This theory “sets as its goal the benefit, pleasure, or greatest good of the oneself alone.” (wofford.edu, 1997). “Egoist use personal advantage…as the standard for measuring an action’s rightness.” (Shaw, 2008, p. 45). Clearly Wal-mart today is acting with interests geared toward their personal advantage and not considering the wreckage it is leaving all around them.
Wal-Mart represents the sickness of capitalism at its almost fully evolved state. As Jim Hightower said, "Why single out Wal-Mart? Because it's a hog. Despite the homespun image it cultivates in its ads, it operates with an arrogance and avarice that would make Enron blush and John D. Rockefeller envious. It's the world's biggest retail corporation and America's largest private employer; Sam Robson Walton, a member of the ruling family, is one of the richest people on earth. Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way: by roughing people up. Their low, low prices are the product of two ruthless commandments: Extract the last penny possible from human toil and squeeze the last dime from its thousands of suppliers, who are left with no profit margin unless they adopt the Wal-Mart model of using nonunion labor and shipping production to low-wage hellholes abroad." (The Nation, March 4th 2002 www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020304&s=hightower).
and 2000 for a spokesperson had publicly mentioned that more than two thirds of our people are not trying to support a family that 's why our jobs are designed for, and yet it seems that they 're low wages and 2000 for a spokesperson had publicly mentioned that more than two thirds of our people are not trying to support a family that 's why our jobs are designed for, and yet it seems that they 're low wages don 't even support those who aren 't trying to support a family. So who do they help? Walmart doesn 't provide adequate healthcare, the healthcare isn 't just for the family it is for everyone who would like good health. But while Walmart has its downs it also has a few pros, like their genius inventions such as the Telon, And their ingenuity have helped make and bring Walmart to the top. They have intelligently used their barcodes on products to bring about information, such as how many our soul, how many are expected to be sold, prices and even discounts. Then Walmart brilliantly patented the idea so if other competitors want to stay in the game, they have to buy this idea from Walmart just to keep up with Walmart. It 's pretty brilliant when you think about it. They also use a open price system where you are drawn into a department by the low prices they stick in front and you stay because you assume that other products in this department will have similar low prices, when in reality they might be more expensive than other
Wal-Mart initially began its operations in 1945, when Sam Walton leased a ‘Ben Franklin’ franchise variety store in Newport, Arkansas. After relocating to Rogers, Arkansas in the early 1950s, Sam Walton’s ‘Ben Franklin’ became ‘Walton’s 5 & 10’. By 1962, Walton found himself the chain owner of 11 different Walton’s stores across Arkansas. He then decided to rename the chain ‘Wal-Mart’, after himself. On October 31, 1969, after further expansion across the state, the chain was incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Three years later, Wal-Mart was approved and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
Sam Walton was born in 1918 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. In 1942, at the age of 24, he joined the military. He married Helen Robson in 1943. When his military service ended in 1945, Sam and Helen moved to Iowa and then to Newport, Arkansas. During this time, Sam gained early retail experience, eventually operating his own variety store. He opened the first Walmart in 1962 at the age of 44 in Rogers, Arkansas. His competitors thought his idea that a successful business could be built around offering lower prices and great service would never work. As it turned out, the company 's success exceeded even Sam 's expectations. By 1990, Walmart was the nation 's number-one retailer. As the Walmart Supercenter redefined convenience and one-stop shopping,
In 1945, Sam Walton opened his first variety store and in 1962, he opened his first Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers, Arkansas. Now, Wal-Mart is expected to exceed “$200 billion a year in sales by 2002 (with current figures of) more than 100 million shoppers a week…(and as of 1999) it became the first (private-sector) company in the world to have more than one million employees.” Why? One reason is that Wal-Mart has continued “to lead the way in adopting cutting-edge technology to track how people shop, and to buy and deliver goods more efficiently and cheaply than any other rival.” Many examples exist throughout Wal-Mart’s history including its use of networks, satellite communication, UPC/barcode adoption and more. Much of the technology that was utilized helped Sam Walton more efficiently track what he originally noted on yellow legal pads. From the very beginning, he wanted to know what the customers purchased, what inventory was selling and what stock was not selling. Wal-Mart now “tracks on an almost instantaneous basis the ordering, shipment, and delivery of literally every item it sells, and that it requires its suppliers to hook into the system, enabling it to track most goods every step of the way from the time they’re made and packaged in the factories to when they’re carried out store doors by shoppers.” “Wal-Mart operates the world’s most powerful corporate computing system, with a capacity (as of late 1999) of more than 100 terabytes of data (A terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, or roughly the equivalent of 250 million pages of text.).
Wal-Mart was established in 1962 by Sam Walton. The first Wal-Mart store was built in Rogers, Arkansas. Wal-Mart's were gradually put up around the United States and then moving to other countries such as Japan.
Jim Walton is the youngest son of Sam Walton and Helen Walton. Sam Walton is the founder of Wal-Mart. The first Wal-Mart opened on July 2, 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. It was called WALTON’S Five and Dime. Jim Walton got his money from his father and got a portion of Wal-Mart and his other 3 siblings got their money and potions of Walmart as well.
The Wal-mart is the largest retail chain in United States and in the world. The wal-mart was founded in the year 1962 by Mr Sam Walton. It was originally named as Wal-Mart discount city in Rogers, Arkansas. At the time when the Wal-Mart stores started in the year 1962 it was focused only in small rural cites and town which had a population of 5000 to 25000. It was soon increased to 18 stores in 1969. In the next 30 years it had more than 4750 stores across 50 states in USA and 9 countries with $245 billion sales. It started its international operations in Mexico in the year 1991 and then it expanded it to different countries across Europe and Asia.
The retail giant started operations in 1962 and was founded by Sam Walton. Current, Wal-Mart is the fastest growing and the biggest retailer with a total of 3,400 stores within the United States and 3,300 other stores in other parts of the major cities in the world. The retail stores have 1.5 million employees and annual revenues of more than $350 Billion.
The first Wal-Mart store opened in July of 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas by Sam Walton who believed that the future of retailing was in discounting and to avoid competing with established giants like Sears and Woolworth, Wal-Mart’s stated out of the large cities in the beginning and this strategy help avoid competition, while in rural areas Wal-Mart began growing their customer base by offering ways to save money and shorter travel distance, Sam Walton felt the best way to make customers happy was to provide the low prices every day (Farhoomand, 2006). The company needed to continually find ways to control the operating costs so the savings would then be passed on to Wal-Mart customers in the form of lower prices than the competitors. Walton was opposed to having any kind of employee unions for its company and saw them as a disruption and an inconvenience (Farhoomand, 2006). The continued search for lower prices made him aware of business related travel cost, Wal-Mart executives stayed in low cost hotels when they traveled and the cost related to the services provided by suppliers, Wal-Mart helped suppliers improve operations and efficiency to produce lower cost. Walton wanted the suppliers to correct any nonessential or insufficiencies existing in their business structures as a way of gaining lower prices and higher value products for its Wal-Mart stores. To further push savings Wal-Mart forced cost down by eliminating the middleman and buying directly from the manufacturers. This cost saving also applied to executive salaries Walton felt providing employees with stock options, training opportunities, and allow employees to grow and develop would be a better way to engage and involve them in his vision (Farhoomand, 2006).