Competing against Wal-Mart

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Competing against Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is a giant retailer with 8500 stores in 15 countries, with 55 different brand names. Wal-Mart is also a manufacturing, logistics, IT and supply chain driven company that has retail stores. The power of Sam Walton created strategies and policies for the world's biggest retailer cannot be underestimated, but companies can successfully compete against it.

Competitive advantage through differentiation

Grocery stores and general merchandise stores need to realign their business plans. Differentiating products is how new firms can succeed today. By manufacturing products according to the customer needs and supporting that with a great service is how new companies can compete against Wal-Mart. The stores should offer wide variety and high quality products for customers looking for more collection.

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Supply and Distribution Strategy

With the unique supply chain and the distribution strategy Wal-Mart fetch the products quickly from suppliers and partners and transfers the products from the dock to stores and customers in 72 hours. Wal-Mart requires only 10% footage area of its stores and warehouse for storing for inventory, where as competitors require 30 to 35% footage area. New firms and stores can replicate this model for managing inventory, distribution and take the advantage of specialized trade associations to create of group of local companies. And use the association as a platform to benchmark and share best practices.

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