Walmart: Review of Strengths and Weaknesses

Walmart was founded by Sam Walton on March 29, 1918. This company, which is based in Bentonville, Arkansas, USA, is engaged in the sector or type of retail industry, discount stores, supermarkets or small-scale stores.

The most recent revenue was 404.16 billion US dollars. Meanwhile, net income reached a fantastic amount: US $ 13.59 billion. No wonder because this company employs 2,100,000 employees.

Retail and discount stores first appeared in the US in the early 1950s. The retail store concept is gaining popularity in the US. Sam Walton, who believed that US consumers wanted something more from retail stores, opened a retail and discount store in Rogers, Arkansas. Walton had traveled all over the United States and had a wealth of experience relevant to discount stores.

Walton’s ideas and efforts made Wal-Mart one of the companies that have succeeded in changing the global business world. The ideas of retail stores, discount stores and super stores that he initiated have changed the world of shopping and consumers. Today the company employs more than 2.1 partners and direct employees. Wal-Mart stores serve more than 176 million consumers worldwide each year.

Characteristics of Wal-mart Promotions

Walmart is very aggressive in expanding. The last expansion strategy is to enter a country, take over or buy national retailers. After being purchased, they were converted into Wal-Mart stores so that they benefited from the loss of big competitors and strategic locations as well as employees. This is an efficient way of using funds.

Creating a favorable impression and customer satisfaction of the Wal-Mart brand. This retail wants consumers to get the image that the best (cheap). How to communicate through television and print media. Their promotional characteristic is the use of stores and their own employees in advertising.

Promotion Strategy

Wal-Mart’s effective promotion as a department store by always holding the motto “everyday low price” means that Wal-Mart guarantees that all the products it offers are cheap at all times without playing a price mark-up. On the other hand, in terms of a promotional approach to make it easier for customers to shop, Wal-Mart always organizes its stock display merchandise based on its function categories in a systematic and neat manner.

As one example in the promotion of Wal-Mart products by using smartphone services. The application is said to have an interactive map that provides directions for the location of goods, a shopping list input feature by voice, an item scanner feature to speed up transactions at the checkout and promotions at the store. This method is widely imitated by Wal-Mart’s competitors.

As a pioneer of the discount merchandising strategy, namely buying directly from suppliers who offer the lowest prices, Sam Walton (Owner of Wal-Mart) is able to sell cheaper goods with larger quantities. This high-volume playing strategy allowed him to negotiate a lower purchase price for future purchases. In this way, sales volume and profits increase.

Pros of Shopping at Walmart

Superior in low prices, wide product selection, good logistics services that keep prices low and maintain the availability of goods and have advanced information technology.

Walmart applies information systems to warehousing, computerized manufacturing, point of sale and online order processing, and customer and supplier relationship management. In addition, Wal Mart has financial resources, physical resources, organizational structure and technology, human resources, reliable innovation capabilities and a good reputation.

Wal-Mart is innovative in combining discount shopping services, optical centers, painting studios, photo shoots, cell phones, salons, video movie rentals, and snack shops.
In addition, Wal-Mart also dominates the retail market to the global market. use special software for the company’s internal operations, thus providing products and services to be cost effective.

Walmart also implements RFID, namely making production forecasting and distribution of goods more efficient, monitoring the existence and availability of inventory becomes easier, problems with stock taking and theft can be overcome, the availability and movement of goods are always updated, improve promotions, save funds from labor costs, loss of out of stock and depreciation of goods, preventing counterfeiting and guaranteeing product safety and feasibility.

Wal-Mart excels in satellite communication technology for distribution and logistics, so that logistics and distribution costs are efficient. Wal-Mart became the retail leader, because it was able to bring advances in information technology.

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