History:
Wal-Mart was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 in the Rogers city Arkansas. In 1970 Wal-Mart was opened the first Wal-Mart distribution center and headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Also, the company was launched shares and has 38 stores with sales of $ 44.2 million and the number of workers was 1500. In 1971, the company has stores five states which were Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma. In 1972 Wal-Mart has been adopted and included in the list of New York Stock Exchange. The price stock market price of U.S. $ 47.50. Therefore, after 18 years from the foundation, Wal-Mart sales exceeded one billion dollars where it was in 1980 and then the company entered the global market in 1991, opening the first store in Mexico City. Then, in 1999 Wal-Mart became the largest chain private employer in the world, employing 1,140,000 workers and in 2000, Fortune magazine awarded the ranked Wal-Mart with position fifth in the list of the best companies. In 2002 the company obtained the Ron Brown Award, which considers being the highest presidential award recognizes achievements in term of employee relations and community initiatives. in 2005 employed more than 1.6 million around the world divided in 3800 stores in United States and 6200 stores over 12 countries which visited by about 138 million consumers every week.
Products/Services offered:
Wal-Mart is a mass market in terms of retail and has lot of shops which sell different types of products such as :
• Family apparel
• Electronics
• Toys
• Lawn and garden items
• Jewelry
• Automotive products
• Home furnishings
• Hardware
• Sporting goods
• Pet supplies
• Housewares
• Healthy and beauty aids
On the other hand, it combines the place of sale food, pharmacy, banking and beauty salons in one building, which allowing consumers to shop and meet all their needs without move between several places. Also, provide a health services by opening clinics in Wal-Mart, in an attempt to increase access of health service at reasonable prices . Moreover, provide a service of grocery delivery on the Internet called “Walmart to Go” in California city.
Size of the company:
Wal-Mart has large economy which makes it the largest retailer in the world at all, it employs more than 2 million people and more than 100 million people goes to its stores every day .The profit equal to total annual earnings of top 3 competitors for it and this makes annual sales occupies the ranking 19 as the highest annual revenue among world countries . Wal-Mart recorded a strong growth in the second quarter of 2011 with higher profits increased by 5.7% to reach $ 3.8 billion. The value of sales reached 109.4 billion dollars, with a rise of 5.4% on the basis of the second quarter .therefore, data exceeded the analysts' forecasts for sales and profits significantly, and on the other hand the company raised slightly its forecast for full year .
Where in the world does it operate:
Wal-Mart operates in all parts of the world under 69 different names, such as Walmex in Mexico, Asda in Britain, Seiyu in Japan and Best Price in India.
Also,Wal-Mart transformed from stores selling clothes and some products at low prices, to currently include:
1) Major centers for shopping which is Wal Mart U.S stores get 61% of sales , and sell products in U.S with cheap price supplement the fully supermarket such as Walmart Supercenters , Walmart Neighborhood Markets and Walmart Discount Stores .
2) Sam’s Club gets 12% of sales , and sells for members only .
3) Wal Mart international stores gets 27% of sales , and operates in 26 countries around the world .
Suppliers/Partner demographics:
Gazeley is a global company for the development of cost effective logistics , operating in Europe built warehouse and distribution services to ASDA WalMart in Britain and Wal-Mart China, which help the largest retailer in the world to expand in India and Mexico
.
Wal-Mart network reaches more than 2400 warehouse and 100 distribution center in the world, because it is necessary to reach all stores, study sales and then request of goods from suppliers. In 1990 WalMart has been able to cooperate with thousands of suppliers electronically with Electronic data Interchange. After that, Wal-Mart develop its own program called “Retail Linkâ” allowing suppliers using the internet to connect with Wal-Mart database and find out the sales data of warehouse inventory and warehouse for their goods, so they know when they supply the required quantities , arrange shipping and manufacturing. Therefore, the Wal-Mart obtained the speed and best performance. With regard to contact employees, the company itself formed a network called the Pipeline which is Wal-Mart wide intranet.
Wal-Mart was one of the first companies that used the electronic scanners in order to find out which the most materials sold and packaged continuously . In addition, Wal-Mart was the first to use the barcode and currently used the method of Radio Frequency identification technology (RFID), this technology contains more information than barcode as well as it is a way to read and save information remotely . Also, this technology has several advantages, firstly read hundreds per second of possible codes. Secondly, each product has its own code so the possibility of theft or manipulation is very difficult .
Consumer/Customer base:
While Wal-Mart aware the economic difficulties faced by its primary consumers, one of this are consumers who suffer from financial difficulties and buy goods in small quantities. The other is that with rising petrol prices more than doubled from what it was ten years ago, people hesitate to go to the big shopping stores.
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