Walmart Case Study

1. Strength:
a. Walmart is the world’s largest general retailers that operating supermarket, department stores, and grocery stores. I see a strength in it always provides the lower price to its customer every day by its operations. Because of its efficient and effective planning and distribution operations, such as improved logistics system, and introduced new data analysis tools for distribution network efficiency, it can reduce the operating cost to provide customers a lower price.
b. Walmart’s vertical integration and acquisition made it takes competitive advantage on suppliers and other competitors. I can see this as a strength is because Walmart’s supply chain is very efficient and it owns a strong bargaining power to its suppliers. It also introduced new technologies such as the latest just-in-time system to its daily operation to make Walmart runs more effectively. Furthermore, its vertical integration and acquisition allows Walmart to lower the cost of its goods or raw materials, which give its pricing strategy more flexibility, compare to its competitors.
c. Its international alliance strategy help

As a multinational corporation, its oversee management is a weakness part. I read an article that was talking about Walmart’s failure in Germany, it closed its business in Germany in 2006 with a loss of about 2 billion dollars. The case was talking about a guy who couldn’t speak even a German word that helped making decision in Walmart Germany. Its every-day low price strategy didn’t work in Germany so they couldn’t attract customers, because customer in Germany like fair competition, they don’t like unfairness things happened to them. The decision makers didn’t realize that but keep investing money to make its price lower, even lower than the price that supplier gave it to them, which cause a failure in Germany. Bad management in oversee market led Walmart to failure also happened in South Korea and India, which led Walmart a big loss in Asian