I. Introduction
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. was first established and founded by Sam Walton at Rogers, Arkansas in 1962. The business growth of the retail store was momentous that within a span of seventeen years in operation, Wal-Mart had already topped annual sales at one billion US dollars. By the end of January in 2002, Wal-Mart has been recognized as the largest retailer in the world a sales record of US $218 billion. With this huge and continuous development, the retail store was eventually able to operate at the global level. The global operation of Wal-Mart was marked by the establishment of its first international store in 1991 at Mexico City (Govindarajan & Gupta, 2001).
Through its international reach, an estimate of one hundred million customers are said to visit a Wal-Mart store found somewhere in the world. A total of 1.3 million associates worldwide are employed by the company and are distributed within its 3,200 stores in the United States as well at over a thousand other stores in Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Puerto Rico, China, Germany, Korea and in the United Kingdom.
The business is actually divided into three main segments: Wal-Mart Stores, Sam’s Club and International Stores. Years of operation have indeed proved Wal-Mart’s effective techniques and management, resulting to significant business success. In this analysis paper, the internal and external factors affecting the company will be analyzed. Furthermore, its strategies supported by relevant sources and models will be described as well. Finally, recommended strategy based on the analytical findings will be developed. As a retail company, Wal-Mart offers a wide array of products to the consumers. These include groceries, toys, apparel for women, men and children, jewelry as well as other hard goods; all of these product lines are sold at reasonable and generally affordable prices. The services of the company on the other hand, are centered on the operation of multiple