Walmart Case Essay

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Marketing – Summer 2013 (Assignment 1: Walmart Case; Submitted by: Rohan Saldanha) 1. What are Wal-Mart’s key success factors in the United States? Evaluate the difficulties in transferring these key success factors to other nations? Walmart has been a success in the United States due to a variety of factors. Firstly, most of its supercenters are about 185,000 square feet and offer a plethora of groceries, electronics and other consumer goods at prices that are rarely matched. Its wholesale brand, Sam’s club, offers customers conveniences such as parking and large “warehouse-like” shopping spaces with high ceilings. Besides, an efficient logistics’ system, Walmart, because of its size, has the ability to eke out the lowest prices from its suppliers, while simultaneously encouraging its suppliers to innovate new products and produce those products in large volumes. So, on a macro level, Walmart seems to have the correct strategy in the United States as far as promotion, price, product and place are concerned (4P’s of marketing). One of the main reasons for Walmart’s lack of success in other countries is in trying to impose American values, cultures and shopping habits in other countries. Take Germany for example, where consumers felt that additional labor used to pack purchases added to the final cost of the product. Also, working hours for the attendants were way beyond what was allowed by the German government for such categories of labor. Walmart’s foray into India has not met with success either. Being a developing economy, local traders fear that a behemoth like Walmart would put them out of business. Also, the Indian government is not in favor of large multinationals foraying into India with 100% foreign ownership and is only willing to allow a maximum of 51% ownership by any retail multinational. Its business idea of operating multi-story retail

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