China: The Start of a New Era for Wal-Mart Global Expansion

The location of the first Wal-Mart in the Fortune Global 500 for the year of 2001 to 2002 turnover of 219.81 billion dollars. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the retail in the world. The company was much larger than its competitors in the United States - Sears Roebuck, Kmart, JC Penney and Nordstrom combined. In 2002, Wal-Mart operates more than 3,500 discount stores, Supercenters and Sam's Clubs in United States and over 1,170 stores in major countries around the world. The company also sells products online via the website, www.walmart.com. Wal-Mart is one of the largest private employers in the world, with the use of force about 1.28 million. The

Walmart faced strong entrenched competition in Canada and Europe. In these developed countries, they couldn’t gain critical mass through internal growth, so they had to acquire companies that have been in the market already. They acquired Woolco, a money losing operation, applied many of the American business practices, and within a few years, the Canadian operations were successful. They have 317 stores, and they account for more than 35 percent of the Canadian discount and department store market. In Europe, Walmart entered Germany by acquiring the Wertkauf hypermarket chain in 1998 and entered the UK by acquiring the 229-store ASDA group. They the leader and are now losing ground to Tesco. A major problem for Walmart in the European market is overexpansion. Accompanied with the famous “Always low prices” approach, they met large resistance from the competition and regulators. Large price wars began because Walmart was accused of underselling the competition. They struggled to build a strong competitive base in German losing more than $1 billion. They were unable to create a competitive advantage, so they sold their operations to a competitor, Metro. They also faced problems in Korea, so

Wal-Mart had been criticized for its record in employee relations. Wal-Mart had no unions, despite

Within less than 30 years, Wal-Mart had transformed from a small rural retailer in Arkansas into the largest retailer in the U.S. In order to continue this rapid growth, the company had started to pursue international expansion grounded in the belief that the firm’s business model of offering quality products at low prices and great customer service would appeal to consumers everywhere around the world (p.8)[1]. China was of particular interest in going international as Wal-Mart’s top management held the opinion that it was the only market in which the firm’s success story in the U.S. could be repeated (p.2/8). However, in 2005 (nine years after its

Outside the U.S. Costco has stores in Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. Costco’s main international market is Canada. In fiscal 2015, for example, Costco’s Canadian store was more profitable than all its other international stores combined. If its market in Canada ever failed, then this could devastate this company (Soni Part 6). Costco needs to diversify its international markets to avoid such vulnerability. Meanwhile, Kroger does not have any stores outside the U.S. (Soni Part 20 COST), and Walmart has stores in 26 other countries (Soni Part 3).

Walmart is one of the biggest retail stores in the world. Walmart operates worldwide with current total count of its stores reaching 9.667 stores worldwide (Walmart Corporate, 2011). Interestingly, Walmart is an organization that is currently non-unionized. This paper will provide brief background information on Walmart organization. Legal issues and obstacles that Walmart could encounter will also be identified. The writer will determine which federal, state, or local laws could be broken because of the legal issues and why. Finally, recommendations to minimize possible litigation will be provided.

Walmart is one of the biggest companies in the world, but it also has extremely tough competitors. Currently Walmart is the largest retailer in most countries of the world for numerous reasons. For one, they supply a wide variety of items to be purchased that include entertainment, groceries, health and wellness, hardware, furnishing, apparel and many more. Walmart also has over 11,100 stores in over 27 countries according to Market Realist. These two reasons alone give Walmart a huge advantage over its’ competitors. Walmart has both strengths and weaknesses when it comes to its’ competitors not only across the nation, but across the world as well. Some of the main domestic competitors of Wal-mart consist of Target, Costco, Amazon, and the dollar store trinity. Along with that, Walmart has international competition such as Carrefour in France, Metro in Germany, Tesco in the United Kingdom, Loblaw Companies in Canada, and Ahold in the Netherlands. Although Walmart has competitors with all of these companies worldwide, it still remains the “#1 retailer in Canada and Mexico and has operations in Asia (where it owns a 95% stake in Japanese retailer SEIYU ), Africa, Europe, and Latin America”, according to Hoovers. Strangely enough, Walmart is growing more overseas than it is in the United States. Even with all these companies it has to compete with, Wal-mart’s total sales are still almost 5 times its’ competitors. As it generates a net sale of over $483 billion in one year,

“In the past few years Walmart has begun to face new challenges in addition to antisprawl activists and merchants, from labor unions, competitors, and other activists”(carroll607). The lawsuits for labor for Walmart’s labor practices have also increased over the years with the accusations of paying unfair wages, making employees work off the clock so they wouldn’t have to pay overtime, and discrimination against women. Due to Walmart’s financial impact on the U.S. it also has a huge economic impact on a state and federal level.

With over two-million people employed and an annual revenue of nearly 486 million dollars for 2015, it is no surprise that Walmart is one of the world’s largest retail companies (Walmart Stores Inc.). Walmart is an expanding company, one who is constantly looking for opportunities for new stores. With all this in mind, it easy to see why Walmart has such a large impact on America’s economy. This is why America’s societies should limit their dependencies on Walmart stores and subsidiaries. It is important to do this based on how quickly Walmart came to be the economic power it is, the poor treatment of employees, and the impact on small businesses.

Chapter 8 opens with the question “Is Walmart a good or bad thing for America,” as the author sums up the influence that the corporation has injected and shaped the modern economic structure with worker, consumer, government and competitors. (Lichtenstein 302-03). The United Food and Commercial Workers Union lost critical battles as supermarkets like Kroger, Safeway and local California markets Vons and Ralph locked out employees and forced them to except reductions in wages, health care and pension benefits. (Lichtenstein

One notable business failure of an American corporation in Germany was Wal-Mart, which was forced to entirely close down its operations despite its many international successes elsewhere. This was rooted in Wal-Mart's inability to understand German labor relations. German trade unions are very powerful, and worker protections are important. Initially, Wal-Mart resisted unionization and tried to keep wages low, but was unable to do so because of political pressure from German trade unions and employee refusal to tolerate such working conditions. "Germany service sector union Ver.di, the largest union in the world, filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart for not releasing year-end figures that could be used to negotiate wages. This ultimately led brought

From the beginning, Walmart did not have many threats. However, not only the competition is different, several global retailers such as Target, Carrefour, Costco, and Amazon, are working hard to keep efficiency. They are trying to work together to shrink the prices difference between them. Walmart has facing difficulties from every single angle. Not only the company has internal labor relation problems, but also it has some external threats from its competitors. The company must work hard to get possible solutions against its competitors, and to solve any internal problems regarding its labor relations. Even though Walmart does not have any problems

Wal-Marts venture into South Korea is yet another example of a company attempting to duplicate its strategies and business model unsuccessfully. Wal-Mart didn’t consider how the vast differences in culture could affect their survival and ultimately let their complacency, conservatism and conceit get in the way. Their continued losses forced them to withdraw their investment after failing to adapt to the environment, the culture and customer needs. Wal-Mart should have adjusted their leadership style to be able to transcend context as well as engage in cultural sensitivity by localising their business to suit consumer preferences. More knowledge of the environment and competition could have

Why do you think Wal-Mart did not venture abroad until 1991, despite its success in the USA?

Language is perhaps the most important key to understanding culture in general and the specific values, beliefs, attitudes, and opinions of a particular individual or group.