Wal-Mart

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes the rise and slight fall that Wal-Mart has taken since its founding in 1962. It gives a breakdown of the company's holdings and their balance sheets for January 31, 2000. One of the problems Wal-Mart has to deal with is meeting political demands from several groups and institutions. It also details another problem regarding Wal-Mart's growth and a petition that has been distributed to hundreds of people in the United States. It concludes that in order to survive, Wal-Mart must consider the environment in which they have stores.

From the Paper:

"Since its founding in 1962 by Sam Walton, Wal-Mart has had a nearly flawless track record of growth, eclipsing all other U.S. department store retailers by the early 1990s and succeeding during both lean and flush economic times. However, even Wal-Mart has begun to look a little battered in the recent economic downswing: In the spring of 2001, Wal-Mart showed a huge market capitalization of over $230B, down from nearly $300B in early 2000 (www.walmart.com). Much of the loss in its capital was due to its recent struggles in its Internet-based operations as it tried to make a transition to the Internet and found (as have so many other companies) that the transition would not be nearly as smooth as it would have liked. During the last year, Wal-Mart has continued to experiment with both its Internet and corporate strategy. It remains a strong company, however, with much of its strength deriving from its shareholding structure as well as from the fact that the company has always invested very deeply in infrastructure, being among the first to use point-of-sale Uniform Product Codes scanning, and intra-store radio frequency transmission of product UPC to allow exchange of information between central store inventory systems and personnel with scanners on the store shelves along with a satellite system connecting each store, headquarters, and distribution centers, and suppliers."

More papers on Wal-Mart:

• Research Paper # 91854 : "Wal-Mart and Supply Chain Management"
• Case Study # 102381 : "Wal-Mart Stores, Inc."
• Case Study # 148411 : "Wal-Mart's Positive Influence on Chinese Consumers"
• Case Study # 148452 : "A History of Walmart's Globalization Strategy: Strategic Wins in China, Major Struggles in Germany"

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