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Can Wal-Mart Survive China’s Growing Middle Class?

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Can Wal-Mart Survive China’s Growing Middle Class?
China’s rising standard of living and its impact on the discount retail market.

Abstract This paper investigates published articles, financial information and books which discuss Wal-Mart’s recent business activities in China. The activity discussed includes Wal-Mart’s increasing impact and influence on the Chinese economy as a buyer and consumer of raw materials, a manufacturer of products, and as a retailer and employer in China. This paper discusses how Wal-Mart sources its finished products and raw materials in and from China, how Wal-Mart markets to China’s middle class, and how Wal-Mart manages China’s middle-class as both its primary customer and their source of labor in China. The intent of this paper is to provide readers with a high level understanding of how Wal-Mart is conducting business in today’s China and how Wal-Mart’s manages their exposure to the various supply chains in China, its increasing dependence on products and services sourced in China and how Wal-Mart is handling China’s growing middle-class and the nationally unionized workforce in their Chinese stores. Lastly, this paper discusses how Wal-Mart’s business strategy competes and compares with Target Stores, one of their leading competitors in the discount retailer marketplace. Keywords: wal-mart, target, china, supply chain management, sourcing, global marketplace

Identification. This paper discusses Wal-Mart’s history in China and the potential impact of China on its supply chain model as China’s middle-class quickly emerges as a global economic power. As China emerges from a traditional agrarian society, and attempts to shed its strict communist past, can it also be the lead sourcing country in the region for Wal-Mart and other global corporations for the near future? As the major country in the region for

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