...Powell Wal-Mart MKTG305-1301A Applications in Marketing Project Type: Unit 5 Individual Project March 17, 2013 Abstract For this assignment, Wal-Mart was chosen as my Fortune 500 Company. Let’s begin by describing Wal-Mart’s main line of business and provide the name of four different countries that Wal-Mart operates. Then clarify the putting into practice the 4Ps marketing mix theory by Wal-Mart and explain any differences following the carrying out of this theory from country to country. Wal-Mart Wal-Mart stores has maintained being at the top of the corporate ladder and had been on top for two years in a row for Fortune 500 and Global 500 (CNN Money, 2013). Sam Walton opened a Walton’s 5 & 10 store on Bentonville Town Square in Arizona in 1950; this little dime store was the beginning for Wal-Mart. This location is now Wal-Mart’s Visitor Center. Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas (Wal-Mart, 2012). Wal-Mart is all about helping people to save money so that they are able to live better lives. People are able to shop anytime, anywhere whether it is online, from their mobile devices, or in retail stores (Wal-Mart, 2012). Wal-Mart has locations operating in 27 different countries under 69 different banners. Four countries in which Wal-Mart operates are: United States, China, Argentina, and Japan. In the United States, there are Wal-Mart Supercenters, Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart Express, Neighborhood Markets, and Wal-Mart Discount...
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...function The first Wal-Mart opened in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. Wal-Mart has been dedicated to making a difference in the lives of their customers. This business is the result of Sam Walton’s visionary leadership, along with generations of acquaintances focused on helping customers while building the community, and saving money (Wal-Mart.com). This heritage defines the company in terms of who Wal-Mart is and what the company’s goals are today. In 2009 Wal-Mart introduced a plan that was hoped to guarantee that the company would remain the industry leader. Project Impact is based on three strategic initiatives that will improve the benefits to the customer. The three initiatives are; Save Money, Live Better; Wal-Mart is aiming to keep customers happy and keep them returning to the store. Over the last decade the company had lost customers as they frequented the newer stores of its competitors such as Target. By implementing Project Impact Wal-Mart is renovating its stores in the US by widening the aisles, lowering fixtures, improving signage, and adding natural light to give consumers a store that feels friendlier (Wal-Mart strategic initiatives). Customers are more likely to shop when they feel comfortable. Goals and Strategies The first of the three visions is called Save Money, Live Better. This vision has a number of components that Wal-Mart is following. • Price Leadership – The Company is well known for its “Every Day Low Pricing”, but Wal-Mart’s desire is to...
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...their multi-year contract, are cell phone bills. A recent survey by CTIA- the Wireless Association found that 285 million Americans are mobile subscribers, which translates to about 91% of Americans. The same survey found that revenues in 2009 totaled nearly 150 billion dollars, with an average monthly bill of $48.16. (Association, 2009) All those numbers have spiked the interest of the folks at Wal-Mart, who recently unveiled their own brand of mobile phone service, Straight Talk. However unlike most of the competition Wal-Mart is offering a simple two plan, no contract service that is sure to draw customers looking to save money and remove the long-term contracts from around their necks. Straight Talk has one plan for $30 a month that comes with 1000 minutes, 1000 text messages and 30 megabytes of data, and the other plan for $45 a month comes with unlimited minutes, text messages, and data. Wal-Mart is seeking a customer base that is one looking for an inexpensive and reliable phone service, and two wishes to remove the restrictiveness of the typical long-term contracts. Wal-Mart has used the marketing matrix to successfully launch their new phone service. The marketing matrix (often referred to as the four P’s) is outlined below. Product Strategies- the heart of the marketing mix, the starting point, is the product offering and product strategy. It is hard to design a place strategy, decide on a promotion campaign, or set a price without first knowing the product to be...
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...Wal-Mart & Target – 2014 Holiday Season Strategy Retail stores Target and Wal-Mart have tacked holiday season in a different way this year compared to before. In previous years, there has been a trend to bring Black Friday’s discounts earlier in November, however, this year Wal-Mart and Target went beyond all market expectations. Wal-Mart’s strategy for the holiday season is “to offer the best brands, to make shopping experience easier, and to continue providing low prices than competitors to bring joy to their customers”, says Duncan Mac Naughton, Wal-Mart Us Chief Merchandising Officer. For 2014 Holiday season these retail stores have begun the season sales on November 1st, providing Black Friday and Cyber Monday discounts from the first week of November all the way till the week before Christmas, stretching the holiday season almost an additional month compared to previous years. Brian Cornell, Target’s Chairman of the Board and CEO, says “Target’s promise is ‘Expect More. Pay Less’, and when we do that, Target is impossible to beat”. Retail stores depend largely on their pricing in order to be competitive and successful in their industry. In order to be able to achieve success, these stores need to implement a pricing strategy that goes in accordance to their mission. In the case of Target and Wal-Mart, their pricing strategy is based on a maximum market share pricing objective. When looking and this retail stores, they possess a huge part of the market and they achieve...
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...Investment in Wal-Mart When making the decision to invest into a company, many factors come into place that has to be taken into consideration before the investment can be done. During this period Team A has done a lot of research into Wal-Mart and what type of company they are and if it would be a good idea to do anything with them. After all the research has been done by Team A, it has been decided that investing in Wal-Mart has a mutual fund manager would be a great idea. The reason Team A has decided to invest in Wal-Mart is because after looking over Wal-Mart’s financial and how the company has been doing over the years in the stock market it has been growing at a rapid pace and Wal-Mart is setting themselves up to be a very profitable company that will be around for a long period of time. Becoming a mutual fund manager and investing in Wal-Mart there are different factors that have to be factored in. Some of those factors consist of knowing the value of the company, how does the company perform during a fiscal year, how is the company’s management team and how will this company do over the next few years. Looking at Wal-Mart Cooperation has a whole has grown from one year to the next year. According to MSN Money, Wal-Mart stock has went up from $58 last year December 2011 to $68 this year December 2012. (MSN, 2012) Wal-Mart Cooperation has been around for many years but they started offering stock for investment back in 1970, when they began trading on the New York Stock...
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...orWe chose to use descriptive statistics because we are looking at a group of people at wal mart. Descriptive, because we are researching on wal mart, and how they lack customer service. This experiment has been done and there is a high percent of people who have claims against wal mart and all those claims are on how bad customer service is there. Wal mart does surveys every month and they gather nationwide, they gather more than 500,000 surveys from all the stores in the United States. If we took those 500,000 surveys and we randomly picked a number from each we will find a solution and the problem is not new to wal mart. Surveys is what has told wal mart that they have bad customer service but since they lead in sales due to all the low prices they have, wal mart does not feel that big of a loss when customers stop shopping there and shop at a competitors store. But yet we can also do inferential to make a prediction but the prices at wal mart is what keeps wal mart running. We will display the results starting with now. How, the percentage of sales, and customers walking in and out the stores. Once Wal mart invest in training for better customer service then that is when we will notice the difference. We will display the results quarterly, in a bar graph to show results of customers, we will use percentages to show the increase of profit and last is continue to do surveys to know that we as researchers, that wal mart is decreasing the percent on bad customer service. HOW...
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...1. Did Wal-Mart overestimate the transferability of its FSAs? Wal-Mart’s expansion to the German Market, did not develop as expected. The unique characteristics of the German Market hindered Wal-Mart’s successful model and the company was not sufficiently prepared to cope with all the liabilities of foreignness it faced in Germany. For example, it was impossible to provide EDLP due to the small size of Wal-Mart Germany, its inability to expand rapidly and its illegally judged loss-leader strategy. Wal-Mart’s secondly transferred FSA, its so-called ‘exceptional service’, was also overestimated, due to the fact that several of Wal-Mart’s basic operating principles were only partially compatible with German stakeholders expectations. To conclude, Wal-Mart overestimated the ease of transferring its FSA’s into the German market, without keeping in mind the host country its cultural differences, local regulations etc. Nevertheless, Wal-Mart used its bad experience problems from the past, as a guide for future growth and changed its core culture. They implemented a new system wherein a stronger focus on government restrictions, management requirements, cultural differences, and the specificities of the competitive landscape was integrated. Wal-Mart learned that is important to hire local managers. So, to reduce the lack in adequate knowledge about the international market Wal-Mart is operating in, the company now leaves greater autonomy for local management and more rigid financial...
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...profits and overall net income of these multinational corporations. McDonalds, Exxon and Wal-Mart are among many global companies that have been able to increase their revenues by operating in international markets. Wal-Mart’s international ventures accounts for 20.1% of their total revenue which is estimated at $60 billion annually. The purpose of this paper is to select a company and discuss their business model. The company we will be looking at through out this paper is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s slogan “Saving people money so they can live a better life” is what Wal-Mart’s business model is all about. Selling thousands of quality merchandise to low-income consumers at extremely low prices has been responsible for their success in the United States. Achieving success domestically is quite different from succeeding internationally. Doing business globally requires different business models. For a successful transition into the global environment, each business model must be designed to adhere to the preference or norms of each individual country. Both Wal-Mart and Ikea realized that success in the global market goes beyond offering low priced items when they moved into the global market. Its failure in Germany and South Korea made them realize that culture is a factor that must be considered when operating in international In this paper I will also look at some the factors affecting Wal-Mart and based on my opinion offer recommendations. Some of the factors that will be discussed...
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...Assignment Wal-Mart was founded on the vision of Sam Walton of Bentonville, Arkansas. It is the largest retailer globally and in the United States it generates over 2 percent of the gross national product. This retail giant was started as a company that would provide low prices for consumers daily. It has succeeded in that mission but through the years of growth and economic success Wal- Mart has had some critics related to business practices based on business ethics. Wal- Mart has had numerous class-action lawsuits for practices that have been interpreted as unethical business practices: employees working without compensation, sexual discrimination, healthcare benefits, illegal aliens, the role of unions, and child and other labor laws. All of these practices have been written about and have found their way in the court system. This case analysis will attempt to answer questions based on the framework of business ethics. 1) Are the ethical issues that Wal-Mart faces really different from other large retailers? Based on the number of case studies in the text provided as well as what are on the business news the challenges that Wal- Mart has encountered in the pursuit of meeting stakeholders expectations are similar to other large retailers. Wal-Mart has many internal and external stakeholders. As a publically traded company the stockholders are expecting a return on their investment and for the company to be profitable. The employees are looking for leadership to...
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...of Phoenix FIN/370 June 7, 2012 Dr. Aziz Karim Wal-Mart Wal-Mart is a billion dollar store that supplies people with every need for their everyday lifestyle. With many assets in the company, the company has to keep a close look at the income and the outcome of the store. By doing this consist of the financial report, organization within the store, ethics, SEC report, and looking back at the store financial numbers in the past two years. Keeping a close eye on every aspect of the store will keep them longer in business and continue to supply every community worldwide. Assess the role of ethics and compliance in Wal-Mart organization’s financial environment Every organization has a set of ethical standards they must follow. Wal-Mart values are set apart from the others their Three Basic Beliefs are respect for the individual, service to the customers and striving for excellence. Associates in areas and levels of the business are responsible for understanding and complying with the Statement of Ethics (Wal-Mart, n.d.). The business organization Wal-Mart operates is expected to have a complete set of policies providing guidance to associates for whatever country they are working in. Wal-Mart management is responsible for creating an environment that encourages compliance with ethics standards. Wal-Mart believes open communication is critical to understanding and meeting their associates and customers’ needs (Wal-Mart, n.d.). Associates can trust and rely on the open door;...
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...Customer Based Brand Equity – Wal-Mart Class Discussion Wal-Mart is a transnational mega corporation operating in 27 countries with more than 11 000 stores. In Canada alone, Wal-Mart operates 396 retail outlets quite an impressive number considering they have only been operating in Canada for just over 20 years. Wal-Mart in terms of Brand Equity is quite a contradiction. They continue to lose overall brand value and yet are still the most valuable brand in North America and are ranked in the top 20 brands based on brand value globally. Wal-Mart is a love it or hate it brand. Despite its value, it has nearly as many detractors and is it supporters of the brand. Class Demo Raise your hand if you have heard of Wal-Mart before I started talking today? Raise your hand if you have ever been inside a Wal-Mart? Raise your hand if you have ever purchased anything at all in Wal-Mart? Now, how many of you dislike Wal-Mart? As you can see from this little demonstration, even though we all know and have been in a Wal-Mart we do not necessarily look favorably upon Wal-Mart. This leads me to the first part of Keller’s Model of Customer Based Brand Equity; Brand Salience. Brand Salience: Wal-Mart is brand salient in the fact that as we can see people are very aware and very familiar with the brand. It is part of a lot of people’s consideration sets when shopping and it is seen as value for money. Where Wal-Mart struggles the most in terms of brand salience is with...
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...significant amounts of time and resources developing annual strategic plans and initiatives. Wal-Mart has become a well-known household name over the span of 50 plus years and continues to grow domestically and globally. The purpose of strategic planning initiatives within organizations much like Wal-Mart is to identify current and future markets, new trends, growth opportunities, potential earning opportunities, and overall opportunities for improvement. A well constructed strategic initiative could greatly influence and identify factors such as future source talent and logistical planning and preparation. Wal-Mart’s Strategic Planning Initiatives Save Money. Live Better; Win, Play, Show; and Fast, Friendly, and Clean. These are the initiatives that Wal-Mart introduced in early 2009 in hopes to ensure continuous success as an industry leader. In short, the initiatives were also dubbed “Project Impact” ("Wal-Mart's Strategic Initiatives", 2013). The objective of the initiatives Wal-Mart developed revolved considerably around customer satisfaction and the effects the economy has had on consumers. The idea was to ensure the return of customers as the economy improves. Research indicated that many of Wal-Mart’s customers have moved-on to newer retail chains such as Target over the last ten years. According to "Wal-Mart's Strategic Initiatives" (2013), by implementing Project Impact Wal-Mart is renovating its stores in the US by widening the aisles, lowering fixtures, improving...
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...Sam Walton founded Wal-Mart in 1962. In 1991, Wal-Mart opened its first store outside of the United States in Mexico City, Mexico. Globalization helped Wal-Mart tremendously. They first tested the idea of selling of groceries, had restaurants, banks, and video stores in Europe and Brazil. At the time that many companies were closing factories in America Wal-Mart developed a program called “Bring it Home To The USA,” in which Wal-Mart was replacing items bought from overseas to buying them in the US. Although the company was using products that were made in the U.S. Wal-Mart was rapidly growing overseas. In 1991 they had only one store in Mexico. By 1998 they had over 600 stores overseas, which accounted for about 5 percent of their growth in sales and profits. Wal-Mart was very successful in the United States but in order for them to survive and grow they had to begin building stores overseas (Govindarajan & Gupta, 2002). Wal-Mart also had so many stores in the United States that their only other option to continue to grow was to move into other countries. Wal-Mart has been able to grow into the number one retailer in the United States. According to Bloomberg, the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Walmart is Michael Terry Duke. Mr. Duke has been the CEO at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. since 2006 (2011). And Bloomberg also reports that Charles M. Holley Jr. is the current Chief Financial Officer of Wal-Mart and has held that position since late 2010. Mr. Holley’s education...
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...I. The Theme Wal-Mart was built to save people money so they can live better. Hints to their slogan: “Save Money. Live Better.” Their mission has allowed the company to grow around the world. The culture and the values of their employees help strive for success of Wal-Mart while serving over 200 million customers and members each week(Wal-Mart Annual). We strongly believe that Wal-Mart is the best- positioned global retailer and that they will continue to progress. Cost leadership is the corner stone of how Wal-Mart goes to market. Doing our analysis of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., we gathered our information and different figures from the Hoover’s online through the Willis library’s website, Reuters.com, and Morningstar.com databases which gave us insight to several financial aspects of the firm, including its stock, cash flows, risk, dividends, sales, earnings, debt, and overall performance. II. Business Analysis Profile of the company “If we work together, we’ll lower the cost of living for everyone…we’ll give the world an opportunity to see what it’s like to save and have a better life.” Wal-Mart founder, Sam Walton, summarized his vision back in 1962 for a new type of discount store that consumers would appreciate. As an owner of a much smaller discount store Walton had the experience, did the research, and then put up 95 percent of the startup costs for his new company in which he and his wife truly believed in. The first store opened in Rogers, Arkansas and was...
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...Looking Into WAL-MART The Company Every week, 100 million customers visit Wal-Mart stores worldwide, making it the world’s largest retailers. A leader in the discount industry, Wal-Mart posted $218 billion in sales last year as it continued to specialize in selling discounted household goods. The company has 1.3 million employees working at 3,200 locations in the United States and 1,100 locations in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, China, Korea, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Wal-Mart aims to instill its logo, “Everyday Day Low Prices” in each and every division. Currently the company is broken down into four divisions: Wal-Mart Supercenters, Discount Stores, Neighborhood Markets and SAM’S Club Warehouses. The magnitude and global presence of Wal-Mart allows it to be a dominant player in the retailing market place. It is essential that fundamental relationships within the industry and the company’s environment need to be analyzed in order to efficiently evaluate the correct market price for the company’s stock (WMT (NYSE)). Industry Outlook Household products, retail drugs stores, and personal care segments are expected to produce above-average revenue growth and increase market share in the coming months. The uncertainty between the U.S. and global economies should not affect the sector because many of the products are basic necessities. The retail sector is expected to perform in line with the overall market in the next 6-12 months...
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