Wal-Mart is known today as the largest retailing discount store in the world. Wal-Mart was
merely a vision to Sam Walton forty-five years ago as being a discount store that could sell
products at the lowest price possible. Wal-Mart has grown tremendously over the past few
decades by making several wise acquisitions as well as having an unbeatable pricing
strategy. In this paper, we will discuss Wal-Marts history, strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, threats, business level strategy, structure, as well as make recommendations
about how the company can increase their profits in the future.
History, Growth and Development
Wal-Mart is the brainchild of Sam Walton. The first Wal-Mart opened in Rogers, Arkansas
in 1962. There were 36 different departments in Wal-Mart, selling everything from tires to
cosmetics. Wal-Marts pricing is based on the philosophy that more units can be sold at a
lower price; resulting in greater profits than if they charge a higher price. Other retailing
stores were marking up their products as much as two hundred percent, but Wal-Mart was
only marking theirs up an average of thirty percent. Consumers responded positively to
Wal-Mart, and by 1970 Wal-Mart was a publicly traded company with nearly 40 stores in
operation with sales over $44 million. During the 1970s and 1980s
Wal-Mart continued to grow tremendously, acquiring Mohr Value stores in 1977 and
Kuhns Big K stores in 1981. By 1988, Wal-Mart branched out into the grocery store
business with the introduction of Wal-Mart Supercenters. These Supercenters carry
everything that a Wal-Mart Discount Store would, in addition to a full-scale grocery store.
Wal-Mart is now the ultimate one stop shopping center.
The 1990s brought Wal-Mart further success with the achievement of several major
milestones. In 1990, Wal-Mart became the nations number one retailer. Then in 1991,
Wal-Mart began to expand internationally with their first store opening in Mexico City. By
the late nineties, Wal-Mart became the worlds largest private employer with over
1,140,000 employees worldwide. The years 1998 and 1999 brought two more major
acquisitions with twenty-one Wertkauf stores (a German store), and 229 ASDA Group
stores in the United Kingdom. In 2002, Wal-Mart had sales of $218 billion with 2295
Discount Stores and 1521 Supercenters worldwide.
Vision and Mission Statement
An employee of Wal-Marts corporate headquarters stated that the company does not have a
vision statement. This seems odd that the largest retailing company in the world does not
have a vision statement, no vision of where they see themselves in the future. Wal-Mart
