1. Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest retailer in food industry with more than 2 million employees (source: Wal-Mart.com). Based in US it actually operates in 10 countries worldwide (plus Japan through a controlling share in Seiyu). Wal-Mart Corporate strategy is focused on food distribution industry, covering 5 market segments with as many business divisions:
• Supercenters, their one-stop family shopping centers, huge malls selling from fresh goods to sport equipment and also including “specialty shops” as banks, pharmacies and health clinics;
• Discount Stores selling from apparel to home furnishing, focused on low prices more than the other business divisions;
• Neighborhood Markets, medium-sized stores more focused on day-to-day shopping;
• Sam’s Club, a member only store, specialized on small business supplies;
• Walmart.com, the online store.
All 5 divisions are strictly related; actually they rely on the same competitive advantage - everyday low prices, and they capitalize on the same cost-reduction strategies. Thus Wal-Mart develops a fully-related diversified corporate strategy. Their strategy is diversified in the sense that they do not focus only on huge malls in big cities but they are also present in small cities with discount warehouses and small shops, covering all the market segments, from day-to-day shopping to one-stop weekend shopping, and with different range of prices. Anyway all their BUs capitalize on the ability of their value chain structure to save money, which means lower costs and higher competitiveness. Walmart.com, for instance, is trying to develop Wal-Mart’s famous competitive advantage using Wal-Mart “real” stores ...