WAL MART

Wal Mart

Wal Mart

The Service Sector And The New Economy

Wal-Mart Stores (Wal-Mart) operates retail stores in various formats across the world. The company's key services include the following:

Photo processing services

Cellular service plan

Money order services

Wire transfers

Walmart boasts an eclectic, high quality caliber of customer whose presence actually ENHANCES the shopping experience. Walmart.com does not offer the same opportunities for random grabasstic activities as my friendly neighborhood Walmart. (Singer 2000)

The first primary competitive advantage, which Wal-mart embodies, is innovation and risk taking. Wal-Mart has many policies in place to ensure that employee ideas and concerns can be openly expressed to management. Wal-Mart's success is due to their excellent organizational structure and management. They were the first retailer to make good use of barcodes. Wal-mart has a customer-responsive culture.

Wal Mart current service mix create value for customers. Wal-Mart must keep labor costs down. It does this by making corporate crime an integral part of its powerful and political business strategy. Wal-Mart routinely violates laws protecting workers' organizing rights such as workers being fired for union activities. Wal-mart is a repeat offender on overtime laws; in more than thirty states, workers have brought wage-and-hour class-action suits against the retailer. In some cases, workers say, managers encouraged them to clock out and keep working; in others, managers locked the doors and would not let employees go home at the end of their shifts. And it's often women who suffer most from Wal-Mart's labor practices.

If retail industry is envisioned in 2020, it can be said that there is an increasingly individualized store experience. Growth and diversification of formats. Clearly these are all areas that will influence retailing through the next decade and beyond. Contemplating this increasingly complex, hyper-competitive world, it is somewhat comforting to note that one thing will never change in retail: Companies that can react swiftly to market trends and respond relevantly to new customer behaviors will achieve high performance and growth despite marketplace conditions.

Another hallmark for the future of successful retailers: growth in terms of the multiplicity of geographic, online and format offerings. Looking at Tesco as a harbinger of the future for retail, the company has an incredibly aggressive growth agenda. Through meticulous research and the ability to understand customers at a local level, Tesco then tailors offerings accordingly.

Best Buy is another retailer driving a relentless growth agenda. Like Tesco, the expansion is being undertaken with the customer at heart, and the company is testing different operating models aimed at improving customer experience and ensuring a local touch from an international player. The company has also developed a strong online presence that is tightly integrated with their bricks and mortar operations. This customer-centric approach has steered the development of a robust multi-channel interface, with purchasing available in store, online or through call centers. (Lyon 2009)

In the 2020, service will become an even more finely-calibrated proposition between retailer and customer. And service components will evolve increasingly from reactive to predictive as retailers battle to win the loyalty of an ever-elusive—and ...