Failures Across a Diverse Base

¶ … failures across a diverse base of nations for Walmart to understand how best to align its unique value chain strengths including logistics and supply chain management to the specific requirements of a given nation's cultural foundations. This is seen in the culture clash in the UK and Germany especially, where Walmart failed as a result of not understanding local customs and values (Christopherson, 459).

Walmart also failed to understand how vast the cultural differences were in and between each nation they were attempting to expand into. They failed to take into account the five cultural dimensions as defined by Dr. Geert Hofstede (Hofstede, 82) and failed to connect their value proposition to the needs of the market. This is seen in China initially, across their entire UK experience and is responsible for the failure in Germany.

Walmart succeeded in Mexico because it sought the assistance and cooperation of the government to create a bank, helping to support the infrastructure of the country. When Walmart makes significant contributions to the underlying infrastructure of an emerging nations they tend to experience greater success (Taylor, 189).

4. Success in China for Walmart showed that close coordination with local, regional and national government agencies helped to streamline their overall efforts, as did the joint ventures and eventual acquisitions made. In short, Walmart learned how to integrate itself well into these specific countries at the government, infrastructure and cultural level than they had done in the past.

5. Complete cultural and value disconnect with the Japanese and German consumers on the most critical aspect of the Walmart value proposition, which is price. Japanese customers were insulted by the low prices, seeing them as a signal of a lack of quality. For the Germans, price equated to quality as well.

6. Success throughout Latin America was driven by the build-out of banks and financial institutions in Brazil and other nations, combined with mergers and acquisitions to strengthen their overall market position.

7. Walmart learned valuable lessons globally and decided to revamp stores and remodel the oldest ones to further increase the quality of the shopping experience in the U.S.

8. Walmart learned how powerful having good relationships with foreign governments can be when the Chinese communist party allowed them to open 10 wholly owned subsidiaries and also pursue joint ventures throughout the nation. The key lesson: wining the trust of a foreign government is key to global growth.

9. Brazilian market expanding as Walmart finds new approaches to selling the idea of mass merchandising to this nations' citizens. Growth in India, Russia and South Africa all driven by Walmart's ability to better understand variations in cultural requirements and needs.

10. Walmart's e-commerce strategies are beginning to become more global in scope, with the aligning of their logistics and supply chain systems also designed to support these strategies. Walmart sees e-commerce as having very significant growth potential in the future.