CASE STADY: WAL-MART

Case study on Wal-Mart: Competitive analysis and Challenges

Case study on Wal-Mart: Competitive analysis and Challenges

Introduction

Wal-Mart is the largest retail chain in the world, competing in different segments (Retail, hyper-stores, Premium) in both U.S. and international markets, has overcome great rivals such as Sears, K-Mart. However, having saturated its target belonging to the working class and consumers looking for bargains, Wal-Mart is expanding its low-price strategy to attract more affluent buyers by expanding its line of merchandise, which now includes food ecological wines of higher quality, more sophisticated electronic products and fashionable apparel. According to Wharton faculty and analysts, this is an approach that carries some risks. However, the approach of Wal-Mart is that we cannot in what worked once. The world around us is always changing. To succeed, you have to be out there facing the changes (Franklin, 2001).

Discussion

The challenge that Wal-Mart faces today is that more than fifty percent of consumers in America go to Wal-Mart retail store at-least once a year. However, around 200 million consumers around the world purchases good from Wal-Mart every week. In addition, the company has 6100 stores in 70 countries. Wal-Mart is sending a signal that something in their stores more than a good price. Thus, they have a competitive advantage. On the contrary, there is a notion that the major challenge faced by Wal-Mart is that they face problems with the growth because of saturation. Thus, the company has always stood out for the price, but now wants to increase the quality and image. It will be interesting to see if people believe this new strategy. However, major identified competitors of Wal-Mart to Kmart, Target, Sol Price at both national and international level. Moreover, depending on countries Encrypt in Mexico, Woolco in Canada, Carrefour in Brazil, Asda in Britain (Graff, 1998).

Indeed, ...