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History of walmart case study
Introduction of Walmart
Essay on walmart history
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Wal-Mart Supercenter is a very large chain of stores that is located in several countries. As Wal-Mart expanded its business locations, various distribution centers for the sales were placed in several locations in the world. The Wal-Mart owner appears to have chosen its locations based on the zoning of the given area and based on the ability to hire labor for the facility. Their locations were chosen because the company wanted to minimize the costs of imported products, national brands, and generic products. Wal-Mart also chose locations that would only have certain services that are offered by Wal-Mart, such as an automotive repair area or a pharmacy office. In some specialized stores relies on selling natural resources such as sugar from sugar can, cotton, and paper in various placed in the world.
Wal-Mart is required to pay for the transportation of the product from one area to its distribution center areas. One issue regarding Wal-Mart is that the company needed to find enough workers that could be used to fill the various positions in the company. The company had already been seen as an “antiunion company,” which is known as American’s largest private employer that is privately blamed for its “sorry state in retail wages in America,” (Anonymous, 2008, paragraph 3). Some people opposed the development of the towns that are around the Wal-Mart. In response to the increase in demand for Wal-Mart products and services, Wal-Mart had expanded its list of businesses locations.
Unfortunately, due to the expansion of Wal-Mart, various smaller businesses were closed when the Wal-Mart stores opened in various communities. They may not want to live near a facility that is located near an industrial area for instance. ...
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...ient successful business.
References
Anonymous. (2011). Business Topic: Wal-Mart. Retrieved on April 6, 2011 on http://ce6.howardcc.edu...
Anonymous. (September, 2008). Wal-Mart Statement of Ethics. Retrieved on March 3, 2011 from http://ethics.walmartstores.com.
Bianco, Anthony and Zellner, Wendy. (October 6, 2003). Is Wal-Mart too Powerful? Low Prices are Great. But Wal-Mart’s Dominance Creates Problems for Suppliers, Workers, Communities, and even American Culture. Retrieved on March 30, 2011 from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_40/b3852001_mz001.htm.
Carman, John. (June 21, 2001). Small town takes on Wal-Mart. Retrieved on February 27,2011 from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/06/21/DD160043
Poatsy, Mary Anne and Martin, Kendall. (2010). Better Business. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.
Walmart is bad for America, as some say. The Globalization essay that was handed out in class had many good points. It states that Walmart puts many smaller businesses out of service. A recent study by David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and two associates at the Public Policy Institute of California, "The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets," uses sophisticated statistical analysis to estimate the effects on jobs and wages as Wal-Mart spread out from its original center in Arkansas. The authors find that retail employmen...
Over the past 20 years, the nature of the American retailing market has changed dramatically, going from Mom and Pop's boutiques to mega retail stores like Wal-Mart. Especially in the last decade, Sam Walton's discount stores have proliferated in almost every city across the United States and Canada. But the opinions about the effects of Wal-Mart in small towns divide the rural population in two groups. Through economic, cultural and social arguments, the anti-Wal-Mart activists and the advocates defend their point of view about the expansion of the store in small communities.
Wal-Mart has had a significant economic impact on the US, as well as the economies of countries that have relations with the US. Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest company of any kind, with 80 percent of the households in America purchasing something from the superstore; it is the nation’s largest retailer. Wal-Mart’s continuing price reduction has given Americans the advantage of being able to afford 15 to 20 percent more than they previously could. (Hansen) In a world governed by globalization and greed, competition has become rigid; as a result firms like Wal-Mart have utilized advanced marketing strategies to insure that they are on the ‘neck’ of competition, and are the core deciders of the market. (Ortega) However, Wal-Mart made decisions that were of a disadvantage to aspects of the economy, including the depletion on a small scale of Small Town USA.
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).
This is the reason why these retail businesses are out of business. The reason that makes customers go to shop at Wal-Mart is that, there is ample parking, low prices and they also provide superior goods and services to the customers. Down town destruction started earlier before Wal-Mart was established. Wal-Mart is trying to bring with it new technologies that are aimed at coping with the current technologies. We ought to find new ways of doing things, and this is exactly what is happening with Wal-Mart.
A Macro-Sized Microcosm describes how Wal-Mart is a ‘macro-sized microcosm’ for America’s socioeconomic problems. New technology in the marketplace has created a conflict between labor and capital. This is ruining the U.S. manufacturing base. This reading states that Wal-Mart benefits by relying on suppliers and subcontractors. Wal-Mart buyers demand the lowest price possible, making it competitive with their suppliers. A way they do this is by adding cost efficiencies. These demands make it difficult for suppliers to provide employees with decent wages and suitable working conditions. The government endorses these circumstances. The federal and state governments support Wal-Mart with about $4 billion. This includes “free or reduced price land, tax breaks, sales tax rebates, state corporate income tax” et cetera. Most Wal-Marts in the U.S. receive government subsidy. This makes the price of commodities low and keeps them ahead of the
I don't see Wal-Mart as a huge retailer trying to take over the world with cheap prices. I see Wal-Mart as business that has played their cards the way they were dealt. Our economy is poor right now; banks are hurting because people a...
Today Wal-mart has a higher GDP than the entire country of Switzerland, but don’t worry they’re pretty neutral about it. But there has also been news about how they treat there employees. In 2004 an article was released entitled Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart, and soon after Washington got involved. The bad publicity took a toll on Wal-mart and in fact is still today, Maryland passed a law in January, 2006, that said larger employers, such as Wal-mart, must spend at least 8% of their payroll on health benefits for their employees, and now many other states have followed suit. The bad publicity also made it so 8% of customers shop elsewhere because of what they’ve heard, this has caused lower expected sales around the holidays during 2004, and 2005. Some things they’ve done is in 2006 they paid employees on average 9.36 dollars, while other major retailers like Target and Sears pay on average 11.08 dollars. While this can be easily denied by Wal-mart, another way they have gained bad publicity is from something called off-the-clock work. If they had not finished their job they had to clock out and then still finish their job, meaning they wouldn’t get paid for
Within an excerpt from, “The United States of Wal-Mart,” John Dicker explains that Wal-Mart is a troubling corporation. Dicker begins his article by discussing why the store is so popular within the news in an age of global terrorism, coming to the conclusion that Wal-Mart has a huge scope in the United States and that it has more scandals, lawsuits, and stories than any other supercenter. Continually, he goes on to explain that Wal-Mart outsources jobs and their companies demands makes it hard for employees to have livable wages and good working conditions. Furthermore, Dicker addresses the claim that Wal-Mart provides good jobs, by destroying this perception with statistics showing how employees live in poverty and that their union scene
"Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the world's largest retailer, with $285.2 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2005. The company employs 1.6 million associates worldwide through more than 3,700 facilities in the United States and more than 2,400 units in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. More than 138 million customers per week visit Wal-Mart stores worldwide." (Walmartfacts.com)
Mallaby admits Wal-Mart can treat their employees and other retailers unfairly, but as a result everyone can share in the 50 billion in savings that American shoppers consume annually. The pay that employees get is the price they must pay for low priced merchandise. Because of the minimal pay to employees, Wal-Mart strengthens its’ consumer buying power. Giving the American shoppers the savings they need, Wal-Mart’s has ultimately been them successful. Wal-Mart has potentially wiped out the middle class as an employer, but the employees can now work and ...
Quinn, Bill. How Walmart Is Destroying America (and the world), And What You Can Do About It. Third Edition. Ten Speed Press, 2005. Print.
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).
"Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices." Top Documentary Films. Web. 8 Aug 2011. .
Walmart’s ownership and execution of the supply chain is a core competency that sets them apart from the competition. They have minimized the turnaround time to replenish inventory back into the stores. They also have agreements with suppliers to deliver products direct to the stores. Walmart owns 158 distribution centers strategically located in close proximity to many Walmart stores. The distribution centers employ 7,000 truck drivers to deliver truckloads of merchandise to the 10,700 retail stores with their tractors and trailers, as the inventory system dictates.