Beyond the Aisles: An Insight into Walmart

Walmart is an American discount store chain that was established in 1950 with a businessman known as Sam Walton. Sam Walton managed to purchase a store in Bentonville, Arkansas from Luther E. Harrison and opened a store Walton's 5 & 10. In 1962, the Walmart chain got established with a single store in Rodgers. By 1968, the stores had spread to Arkansas, and by 1980 it had spread to other parts of Southern United States and spreading its stores to almost every state of America. In 1995, it opened its first stores in Canada which was facilitated by the construction of a new store as Kuhn's Big K and Mohr-Value were purchased. Later on, in 1983, the company had introduced Sam's Club with its supercenter stores in 1988. Towards the 21st century, the stores had spread to more than 11,000 store chains in 28 countries (Deutsch, 2015, p. 6).

At some point, the stores made some good sales after Sam Walton made decisions to help increase sales by reducing the prices lower than his competitors; this led to a low-profit-margin. Walton got inspired in how some of the discount department stores succeeded forcing him to open another store in Harrison, Arkansas the same year (McGee, 2018, p. 5). Bob Bogle who happened to be Walton’s assistant, and was in charge purchase and maintenance of Singapore, suggested the name "Wal-Mart" which was given to the new chain. Around 1967, "Wal-Mart" had penetrated across opening 24 stores in Arkansas. Sales wise, the company had reached $12.6 million. The company later opened other branches outside in Claremore, Oklahoma and Sikeston, Missouri (McGee, 2018, p. 8).

Deutsch (2015) states that the first time it experienced the first stock split was in 1972 where it traded at a market price of $47. During this period the firm operated only in five states namely, Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. It later expanded to Tennessee and Mississippi in 1973 and 1974 respectively. As the company grew to Texas, it had already established more than 125 stores making sales of more than $340.3 million (p. 14). Wal-Mart expanded into Illinois in 1977 thus making the first corporate acquisition, where it assumed the operations and ownership of Mohr-Value stores.  The following year in 1978, it immediately acquired the Hutcheson Shoe Company which led to its venturing into other markets and launching the jewelry division, pharmacy, and auto service center.

The table below helps the growth rate regarding sales.

In 2006, Walmart ventured into the upscale market where it competed for stores that were considered to be appealing and upscale stores with wooden floors, a coffee/sandwich shop, and broader aisle (Deutsch, 2015, p. 18). Due to demand for organic foodstuff, Walmart increased the amount of natural food in their stores to compete well with others. However, Walmart has been faced with some lawsuits for various reasons.

Most of the lawsuits were based on employees suing for unpaid salaries. The company has as well got involved in discrimination cases. This was after two black employees sued the company’s different stores for denying them jobs based on their race. Women are also suing the company for discrimination. Despite all these lawsuits, Walmart has still prevailed as it has not been affected financially. As at now, Walmart operates in U.S, Argentina, U.K, India, Brazil, Japan, Guatemala, Canada, Mexico, Salvador, Chile, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, China, Honduras, and Nicaragua (McGee, 2018, p. 18).   

The strategic “moral of the story” - “Walmart’s evolving marketing strategy.”

There are a couple of ways in which one can know what the customer wants and their needs. Walmart uses the merchandisers to find out the needs and desires of customers; the merchandisers primarily establishes on how the business can do better. The strategic moral part of the story is that the company puts its customer wants and needs first and seeks to satisfy them and do away with what they do not need. Any firm that wants to succeed must ensure that they meet the expectation of their clients. From the sales data, it is easy to find out what is going well with the customers.  

Secondly, market research is done and data collected is put together to find out how they interact with one another. More information is gathered from social media and other online platforms where they get feedback from the customers.

Due to lousy posting, the company was traumatized in mid-2000 but, through marketing, the company has managed to change people’s perception and to think about the company. Marketing has saved Walmart as it traded local products thus promoting the economy as well and the local suppliers. The strategy used touches what the customer needs. Finally, strategic marketing should bring the difference to both the customer and the company’s life (CNNMoney, 2011).

References

CNNMoney. (2011, December 14). Wal-Mart's Evolving Marketing Strategy - Video - Business News. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/12/14/quinn-2.fortune/

Deutsch, T. (2015). Chain Stores. Encyclopedia of American Urban History, 5(1), 4-33.

McGee, R. W. (2018). How Large is Walmart? A Comparison of Walmart Sales to Nationss GDP. SSRN Electronic Journal, 3(5), 4-30.