Wal Mart Case Continuation WalMart in China

Annotated Outline of Final Project

WalMart Globally: Why a Fast-Fail Mentality Pays

Failures in Germany & South Korea a Result of Strong Ethnocentrism

Both failures show the WalMart corporate culture had a very strong bias towards ethnocentrism (Ming-Ling, Donegan, Ganon, Kan, 2011) including a believe in their distribution and supply chain systems being so advanced that they could transcend cultural boundaries (Taylor, 2003).

Failures Showed Weaknesses In Managing Governments And Ignorance Of Their Roles As Stakeholders

German government sues WalMart for violation of worker rights, specifically in the area of hours they attempted to push workers to be on the job (WalMart Investor Relations, 2013).

Chinese government courted as a key stakeholder and full disclosure given over how satellite uplinks are used (Ming-Ling, Donegan, Ganon, Kan, 2011) and the WalMart executive management team starts thinking with the same Long-Term orientation (LTO) as exemplified in the Hofstede Model of Cultural Dimensions. This is seen in how strategy is defined for market entry throughout the WalMart annual reports & Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) filings (WalMart Investor Relations, 2013).

II. China -- The Start Of A New Era For WalMart Global Expansion

a. Think Infrastructure And Stakeholder First, Then Value Proposition

i. Supply Chain Variations in...

Mapped to existing supply chain management processes WalMart was excelling at in western nations (WalMart Investor Relations, 2013).
2. Gap Analysis Completed -- Looking for where speed and time-to-market were the critical factors for supply chain items that were unique to the Chinese market (Ming-Ling, Donegan, Ganon, Kan, 2011).

3. Chinese consumers shop four times as more frequently than American counterparts, as the former want to have fresh seafood, produce and other ingredients for their food preparation. This puts an exceptional level of stress on a supply chain (WalMart Investor Relations, 2013).

ii. Supply Chain Piloting Pervasive At WalMart China

1. Goal: Get an assessment of how accurate ship and delivery times are for Chinese-based suppliers.

2. Defining purchasing and procurement strategies that are effective across the many provinces of China, including the variations in currency were completely modeling and piloted before launch of a single store (WalMart Investor Relations, 2013)

iii. Analytics And Reporting Needed Chinese Government Approval

1. Instead of fighting the local government (a contributing factor to failures in Germany and South Korea), WalMart chose to involve Chinese government officials in analytics and reporting pilots (WalMart Investor Relations, 2013).

2. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is an essential platform for managing transactions across the global WalMart…