Walmart Wal-Mart Is One of the Renowned

Walmart

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is one of the renowned and established retailing stores of the world. It is a non-governmental company and operates in a number of countries around the globe. The basic aim of Wal-Mart is to provide goods at a cheaper rate and due to this reason; it gained popularity in the domestic as well as international countries. This retail store is highly successful in various countries like China, Brazil, United Kingdom, Canada etc. However, the operation of Wal-Mart did not gain success in South Korea and Germany. There are a number of reasons for this success and failure (Roberts and Berg, pg. 45).

Since entering, a foreign market requires a deep analysis of political stability, culture, taste and fashion of people, many other factors, Wal-Mart did this analysis greatly, and due to this reason, Wal-Mart acquired different names in different countries. The names acquired by Wal-Mart were the names of the famous retail store of that country. This strategy was adopted because people are already aware about the famous stores of the country and if Wal-Mart opened a retail store with its own name then it had to face the element of risk in that country. In addition to this, Wal-Mart adopted the strategy of partnership in entering the foreign markets to avoid the risk of failure.

For instance, the Wal-Mart acquirement and partnership in Japan with Seiyu is a strategy to generate high revenues. Since joint ventures are a good way to avoid risk therefore, Wal-Mart practices this method of entering the foreign market of China and a number of majority owned subsidiaries, one of the example of this practice is Walmex in Mexico. Besides this, the success of Wal-Mart's partnership with the suppliers of the foreign market is evident from its success in China. Besides this, the Wal-Mart store in China and in other countries maintains the culture of the country. This is another essential factor for the success of Wal-Mart. In China, Wal-Mart has Chinese employees; Chinese management and the instructions are given in Chinese language to employees as well as to the customers for guidance. In addition to this Wal-Mart keeps on arranging different activities for the citizens of different countries, fulfills the social responsibilities and respect the rules and regulations imposed by the government (Spotts, pg. 88).

As it is mentioned, that Wal-Mart in China has Chinese associates and this practice is done in many other countries. Besides other benefits, it increases the job opportunities in the country and thus people remain happy with Wal-Mart. Not only this, but Wal-Mart gives value to the cultural, traditional and religious beliefs of its customers. Before entering any foreign country, it conducts a detailed research about these factors of the country and in order to give respect to the beliefs of its customers, it does not sell the products, which have been prohibited, either from their religion or from their culture. In this way, Wal-Mart gains respect from its customers in return of the respect given to them.

It is true that Wal-Mart enters a foreign market after an analysis and this is a success factor for this widely known retail store but, on the other hand, there are some exceptions to it. These exceptions include Wal-Mart store in two countries, which are Germany and South Korea. Wal-Mart, a leading store, withdrew in these two countries. However, the management carried out research about these countries before entrance, but it seems as if the cultural values and psychology of German and South Korean customers let the store to withdraw from these countries (Schenk, pg. 120-123). In addition to these factors, Wal-Mart also failed to match the customs of Germany. For instance, Wal-Mart was not aware of the fact that in Germany, labor unions are closely linked and have good friendly relations with the companies. Due to this reason, it did not maintain such type of relations with the unions and as a result faced huge criticism from the labor unions. Some people have criticized that Wal-Mart considers these unions as communist and others said that Wal-Mart does not give any significance to the right of the labors.