Wal-Mart's Strategic And Financial Planning: Since its inception about 50 years ago, Wal-Mart has continued to remarkable growth as a firm that focuses on providing customers with a wide range of merchandise at great prices. In its initial years, the company only operated in one store that has contributed to changes in the way retail works. Currently, the firm operates over 10,000 retail units within 69 distinct banners in 27 countries

Further, under this segment are a number of financial products ranging from bill payments to wire transfers and money orders. On the other hand, the company's international segment has in its fold online retail as well as a number of discount and retail store formats. The company's Sam's Club segment has in place private-label items as well as other merchandise categorized as either soft goods or hard goods. Further,

Operations Decision Assume you have been hired as a managing consultant by a company to offer some advice that will help it make a decision as to whether it should shut down completely or continue its operations. It currently uses 100 workers to produce 6,000 units of output per month (working 20 days / month). The daily wage (per worker) is $70, and the price of the firm's output is $32.

The Price-Sensitive Affluents, Wal-Mart has learned (Wal-Mart Annual Reports) is more interested in finding an exceptionally good deal and not necessarily concerned about the shopping experience. This is particularly true as one of the strongest factors influencing the execution of their strategy, the emerging global recession during this timeframe, takes hold. Again as with the Price Value Shopper and the paradoxical purchasing patterns of the Brand Aspirational segment show,

Wal-Mart may find that it is not able to "rollback prices" to compete with discount underwriters. One key opportunity for Wal-Mart is to focus on social welfare to improve their stature within the various communities Wal-Mart is located. Problem Definition As was stated at the outset Wal-Mart is one of the most reviled corporations within the United States. For the various reasons previously stated, Wal-Mart has attained a vastly negative reputation

According to one recent study there is little for the employees to fear concerning outsourcing. The results show that although service outsourcing has been steadily increasing it is still very low, and that in the United States and many other industrial countries 'insourcing' of services is greater than outsourcing" (Amiti, 2005, p. 308). The core team concept helps to emphasize the fact that many companies are outsourcing by insourcing, and