Wal-Mart Globalization Global Corporate Strategy:

Wal-Mart Globalization Global Corporate Strategy: The Case of Wal-Mart For years now, the American mega-retail store super giant Wal-Mart, founded in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 by the late Sam Walton ("Wal-Mart -- Timeline") has been expanding its international reach, with some impressive, although varied success. For example, according to "Wal-Mart" (Wikipedia, August 7, 2005), Wal-Mart: is the largest retailer and largest company in the world based on revenue. If Wal-Mart were its own economy, it would rank 33rd in the world..

It is the largest private employer in the United States, Mexico and Canada. It holds an 8.9% retail store market share -- $8.90 out of every $100 spent in U.S. A retail stores is spent at Wal-Mart. With that much success here in the United States and adjoining areas, it is understandable that Wal-Mart would seek similar success in other areas internationally, e.g., Europe, Asia, and other foreign markets.

According to Ernsberger (Newsweek International, May 20, 2002), Wal-Mart's international endeavors have been (at least as of then) more successful overall in Asian nations like China and Japan [where the Wal-Mart concept of everything under one roof may still be more of a one-of -- a kind novelty than in many European markets] but less so in Europe, due perhaps to a combination of other, more entrenched retail competition, plus the relative protectiveness, compared to the United States, of workers' unions.

Wal-Mart's only European successes so far, also according to Ernsberger (2002) have been in Great Britain and Germany, and more so in Great Britain (where the concept is familiar, courtesy of similar retailers like Tedesco and Sainsbury) than in Germany. However, by clicking on a current link on today's Wal-Mart.com website, "Wal-Mart International Operations" (August 7, 2005), one also learns that: Today, customers at more than 1,600 units in nine countries prove Wal-Mart's Every Day Low Price promise is a message clearly understood in any language.

Wal-Mart International employs more than 400,000 associates [as retail store employees are called by the company] in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Korea, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom. Further, one of the major reasons for Wal-Mart's international success, at least in some areas of the world outside the U.S., is that the company, as Ernsberger (2002) further notes: pays close attention to local tastes. The cooked-food section of the Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, China, includes fried rice-flour buns, pork sausages and chicken feet.

Not far from a shelf of canned Del Monte sweet corn are tins of Ma-Ling brand stewed pork ribs and Gulong brand pickled lettuce. About 85% of the products the store sells come from 14,000 Chinese suppliers. "I can buy anything here -- my groceries, clothes, cooked food," says shopper Ma Jing, a 30-year-old businesswoman.

"The selection is good, the place is clean and my boy can run around and look at toys." She has abandoned frequent visits to traditional Chinese wet markets and neighborhood shops (xiaomaibu) for weekly stops at Wal-Mart, buying more stuff in less time. "The xiaomaibu and market cannot compete.. But as Ernsberger observes, also, Wal-Mart's U.S. operations themselves do not always create the happiest scenarios at home.

That may in fact give future prospective international Wal-Mart markets reason to hesitate: Behind its folksy image, Wal-Mart is a tough, savvy company. Massive sales give the company unmatched leverage over suppliers, which it doesn't hesitate to use. The company is.. aggressively anti-union. So far not one of its more than 1 million U.S. workers is unionized.. Labor activists say Wal- Mart's relentless effort to find cheap suppliers effectively depresses wages even in places as poor as Bangladesh.

However (on the plus side toward Wal-Mart's capacity for increased successful globalization) there remains Wal-Mart's sophisticated supply technology, the best in the retail world, a tool that makes it possible for the retailing giant to meet individual store and customer needs everywhere, almost instantaneously. Ernsberger (2002) points out that: one reason the company is so productive is that it knows how to use technology..

Wal-Mart was the first major retailer to use satellite communications to link stores to suppliers, so suppliers can track sales second by second, and deliver new stock as fast as old stock disappears from the shelves..

[s]ays Dan Binder, a senior vice president of Morgan Stanley in New York "They do a lot of little things right." In perusing the United States Wal-Mart.com website (Wal-Mart.com, August 7, 2005), one finds that enormous attention is paid to local needs and markets, for example, a link to a "store finder" in one's own residential area by zip code.

Daily website advertisement changes are geared toward seasonally-anticipated needs, for instance, a preponderance of "Back-to-School" items advertised on the United States website on August 7, 2005, for a school year beginning in September.

Clicking the "Books" link on that same American Wal-Mart.com website produces a link to "Textbooks." The "Textbooks" link states that: "We have over 300,000 textbooks, all at Everyday Low Prices." That sort of detailed attention to ever-shifting customer needs goes a long way, it seems, toward explaining some of the key reasons that Wal-Mart's marketing strategies and practices have been so successful throughout the United States, and why such strategies and practices could arguably be just as successful abroad, especially in less friendly worker union areas like many parts of Asia, and/or in areas abroad with little or no similar retail competition (again, like many parts of Asia).

One obvious drawback of Wal-Mart's globalization efforts, especially in areas where such efforts are extremely successful, may, however, be the insidious "cannibalization" of indigenous shopping cultures, such as the one in Shenzhen, China, as.