Search results

The state of Maine was selected for study, since adequate sales tax records were available during the early 1990s, when Wal‐Mart entered the state. The sales tax reports were used to document the retail sales of Wal‐Mart towns, neighboring towns, and other towns in the state, in the years before and after a Wal‐Mart store’s arrival. The change in each community’s various categories of retail trade (building supply, food stores, general merchandise, other retail, auto and restaurants) was examined. The results indicate that the towns in each of the three categories were affected in the same manner: Wal‐Mart towns attract new shoppers and total retail sales increased at rates substantially higher than other towns in the state, while neighboring towns’ retail sales levels declined or increased at very low rates.

Wal-Mart has had a major impact on both retailing and the U.S. economy in general through its supply chain management, efficiency, cost-containment, outsourcing, and market power. We examine Wal-Mart's strategy in retailing and its likely impact as it begins to make incursions into health care from the perspective of strategic entrepreneurship (SE) theory. Wal-Mart's resources including an expansion focus, low-cost culture, supply chain management, adoption of new technology, and market intelligence are described and related to the SE model. In addition, Wal-Mart's current health care services and target markets are outlined. This is the first paper which comprehensively outlines the competitive threat which Wal-Mart poses to traditional health care providers and insurers. The paper concludes with implications for the health care industry, future predictions, and potential future research.

This case study analyzes Wal-Mart’s market entry and expansion in the Mexican market. Today’s Wal-Mart has become the largest retailer in Mexico. The case discusses all the current issues of this debate within the perspectives of growing the international firm and other internationalization issues. The case also evaluates the global retailing industry and its changing competition. Within the current circumstances, it is expected that Wal-Mart will continue to grow in Mexico and the NAFTA region. On the other hand Wal-Mart may face heightened competition and will be challenged by Mexican and other international retailers. The significance of this work lies in its timeliness and relevance to the ongoing debate of NAFTA-related boom and internationalization in the retailing industry.

In early 2004, residents of Inglewood, California, a working-class community just outside Los Angeles composed primarily of African- and Hispanic-Americans, were preparing to vote on a referendum that would change the city charter to allow Wal-Mart to build a supercenter on a huge, undeveloped lot in the city. Walmart had put forward the measure after the city council refused to change the zoning of a sixty-acre plot on which it held an option to build. Numerous community and religious groups opposed Wal-Mart's entry and campaigned against the referendum. Walmart promised low-priced merchandise and jobs, but these groups were skeptical about the kinds of jobs and compensation that would be offered, the healthcare that would be provided to employees, and the broader impact Walmart would have on the community. Inglewood was a pro-union community, so there was also opposition based on Walmart's anti-union position. On April 6 Inglewood residents voted to reject the referendum by a margin of 60.6 percent to 39.9 percent. Though smaller, less organized, and with fewer resources than Walmart, this coalition of community and religious leaders had defeated the global retailing behemoth.

After students have analyzed the case they will be able to (a) appreciate the importance of nonmarket factors to execute growth and market entry strategies, (b) understand how the decisions of political institutions depend on the issue context and the alignments of coalitions of interest, (c) formulate and assess strategies to overcome nonmarket barriers to entry.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the underlying reasons for the recent slow‐down in the rate of sales growth for the world's largest retailer, its implications for the economic valuation of this enterprise, and its future as a cohesive organization.

Wal‐Mart's comparative or same store sales growth over the last five years are contrasted with two of its key rivals Target and Costco, and the source and momentum of its core US growth record are examined over the last decade.

The results of the investigation indicate that Wal‐Mart has entered a new phase in its evolution as an enterprise, and the future rates of its growth will be limited to 3‐4 percent per annum in comp, and 10‐12 percent in total sales, excluding any acquisitions. This “new normal” is in part due to the extreme market share of Wal‐Mart in many of its trading areas, and the changing competitive landscape that was in no small part “created” in reaction to Wal‐Mart's own market power.

The analysis and its conclusions are of interest to retailing students and scholars who have been following the Wal‐Mart enterprise throughout the years, as well as retailing and merchandising analysts who have been struggling to define a new valuation model for the world's largest retail company. The paper is also of interest to retail market strategist as it illustrates that there are potential and natural limits to growth in all competitive arenas, and sources of new growth will always have to be sought in new product‐market spaces.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the scholarly historical literature about Wal‐Mart and its relationship to the emergence of a retail service economy in the USA.

The review examines book‐length studies or collections of essays on Wal‐Mart. It highlights the developments that historians have linked to Wal‐Mart, and seeks to demonstrate both the progression of this historiography and the value of studying Wal‐Mart.

This young and relatively small historiography has developed quickly in recent years. Work in the last five years suggests that when historians use Wal‐Mart as a case study or template corporation, they can learn much about the development, nature, and trajectory of the postindustrial service economy and American political culture.

This is the first review essay of historical writing about Wal‐Mart. It will be useful to scholars curious about what has been written and what remains to be written about America's largest private employer and retailer, and the potential of such analysis for further insight into post‐1945 American society, economy, and culture.

In the past more than three years, Wal-Mart has been embroiled in incidents of public scandals. In part, they pertain to Wal-Mart’s global strategy of growth and expansion, where the company’s senior managers have been implicated in using illegal bribery and corruption to secure business and to conceal this information from regulatory authorities. Another issue, albeit longer running, has been the incidents of fire and resulting deaths and injuries of hundreds of people, most notably in Bangladesh, but also in other countries where low-skill, low-wage manufacturing predominates, and where foreign multinationals have been accused of condoning and profiting from sweatshop-like exploitation of workers.

The authors use Wal-Mart as a microcosm of corporate conduct which provides a prism through which to examine the exploitation of negative externalities, i.e. engaging in illegal and unethical behavior by using their bargaining power and market control these companies, pressure host countries to condone environmental degradation, violation of country laws in terms of wages, working conditions and operating in sweatshop-like conditions to maximize their profits at the expense of other factors of production, i.e. labor and resources.

The authors contend that Wal-Mart’s unique business model, which focuses on everyday low price, absolute growth and market share expansion by any means possible and everyday low cost, has led to the company’s enormous success since its founding and has made it one of the world’s largest corporations by revenue. At the same time, this model seriously impedes the company’s ability to improve unit-based profit margins and thus forces it to take short cuts in achieving lateral growth and low-cost production.

The authors also examine in some detail the large gap that exists between Wal-Mart’s pronouncements of the company’s commitment to ethical and socially responsible conduct and its actual business practices. They demonstrate that the company’s communications and claims for ethical conduct are mostly aspirational and fail the test of accuracy, specificity, materiality and verifiability through independent, externally provided integrity assurance.

Finally, the authors outline a number of measures that would need to be taken by Wal-Mart, industry groups that depend heavily on outsourcing from low-skill, low-wage countries for their products and host country governments and the governments of Western industrialized nations whose corporations and consumers are the primary beneficiaries of the exploitative sweatshops that fatten their companies’ bottom lines and enrich their denizens with ample amounts of inexpensive goods.

A mail survey of 428 Nebraska and Kansas businesses from five towns in which Wal‐Mart opened stores between 1989‐1994 resulted in 191 returns regarding retailer response and subsequent performance impact. Less than one third of the businesses with $1 million or more in sales reported a negative impact. In contrast, nearly one half of the businesses with less than $1 million in sales reported a negative impact, with the effect most felt among those retailers located in the central business district. An inverse relationship was observed between changes in retail strategy and store performance.

Investigates the entry of Wal‐Mart in Brazil, and subsequent moves of established retailers and new entrants with data taken from secondary sources and interviews with executives. First, internationalization of Wal‐Mart and its entry are discussed, which caused an impact on Brazilian retailing by accelerating the concentration, automation and modernization of the industry. Competitive reactions were classified in four categories: neutralizing competitors actions, establishing competitive advantage, redefining markets, and changing ownership. It is argued that Wal‐Mart’s experience in Brazil could be an interesting source of learning for foreign retailers desirous of entering the Brazilian market as well as for local companies that need to remain competitive to survive.