Overview
Wal-Mart was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton when he and his brother James “Bud” Walton opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers, Arkansas. Since then, Wal-Mart has grown to be the second largest company in the world. In the United States, the company includes Wal-Mart discount stores, Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and Sam’s Club warehouse membership clubs. The company also has many international operations. Wal-Mart is considered a variety store which focuses on low prices featuring apparel as well as hard goods, and has been committed to upholding their basic value of customer service.
Advances in technology have contributed a great deal to the growth of Wal-Mart. Highly automated distribution centers were implemented and Wal-Mart was able to drastically cut the costs of shipping and delivery time. Sophisticated computer systems were installed to track inventory which resulted in quicker checkout time and reordering. More recently, wire-less in-store systems have been used to increase customer service. Beginning in the early 1990s, Wal-Mart went to great lengths to increase their market share. They introduced a full line of groceries into their stores, diversified their market by appealing to certain ethnic groups through bilingual advertisements, and took steps to promote the awareness of environmental issues.
Currently, Wal-Mart has net sales of $256.3 billion, which is an 11.6% increase over net sales of the similar period last year (“Wal-Mart Company Profile” 4). Business decisions such as closing stores that were not profitable, and expanding during recessions when consumers were looking to discount stores to save ...