netrashetty
Netra Shetty
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT), branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company was the world's largest public corporation in 2010 by revenue.[3]
The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. Wal-Mart, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, is the largest majority private employer[4] Walmart is also the largest grocery retailer in the United States. In 2009, it generated 51% of its US$258 billion sales in the U.S. from grocery business.[5] It also owns and operates the Sam's Club retail warehouses in North America.he Retail Forward
Abstract
In five years, Wal-Mart could be twice as big as it is today if it increases its market share in major categories such as food and apparel and newer areas such as gasoline. In order to grow, Wal-Mart will need to sell new categories of merchandise, operate in new geographic locations (including those in the US that it has not yet tapped), appeal to new consumers, obtain greater share of wallet from its existing customers, and operate in new business sectors.
In The Age of Wal-Mart, Retail Forward explores five likely growth strategies Wal-Mart may pursue, examining rationales, prospects, and likely effects on competitors and suppliers. These possible growth strategies include:
1. Food. Wal-Mart’s growth in the past decade was largely the result of its enormous foray into the food market. Although Wal-Mart is now the market leader, it still has a long way to go. Retail Forward predicts that, by 2006, there will be over 2,000 Wal-Mart Supercenters in the US and food sales at Wal-Mart Supercenters will account for approximately one-third of the national increase in spending on food.
2. Foreign. While further foreign acquisitions are expected, Wal-Mart will not be successful as a global retailer if its only advantage is price. It must also provide a superior shopping experience, strong localized merchandising, and a clear differentiation from competitors. However, it is unlikely that Wal-Mart’s overseas expansion will move swiftly enough to fuel the company’s growth engine. The company’s most probable courses of action will be 1) to grow its existing businesses in the US, extending customer reach, and 2) to move into other businesses in the US with the same velocity it moved into food.
3. Fashion and Family. To get more out of existing stores, and to attract a more affluent consumer, Wal-Mart must ramp up efforts in apparel and home goods. Wal-Mart is already a major apparel force in certain categories, Retail Forward’s annual shopper survey indicates. If Wal-Mart succeeds in convincing shoppers to view the retailer as a destination for fashion needs, it will have a huge impact on the market. Wal-Mart will need to focus on expanding its range of merchandise, improving the quality and variety of its non-food assortment, and developing strong private and exclusive labels.
4. Format. To reach more markets and more consumers, Wal-Mart will drive growth through multi-channel delivery of its core businesses. By opening smaller food stores, developing formats for urban shoppers, and potentially leveraging its strengths by developing drug, dollar, and convenience stores, Wal-Mart could overcome the limitations created by its Supercenter focus.
5. Fringe. Wal-Mart will seek to test the outer boundaries of what consumers are willing to allow Wal-Mart to be. The company will seek to expand at the fringe of its core business by developing sales in highly new and unusual categories. Wal-Mart’s aggressive rollout of fueling stations could be followed closely with the company selling used cars, financial services, home improvement, and foodservice.
The Age of Wal-Mart Awaits
Wal-Mart’s growth over the next five years will revolutionize global retail markets and render the retail industry and supplier industries far more consolidated than they are today. However, its size will test the limits of its organizational scale. The challenge for Wal-Mart will be to sustain growth without straying from its core strengths, and without spreading its wings too thinly.
The mass merchandiser no longer wants to share its sales information with the rest of the retail industry. Can market research firms live without it?
WAL-MART IS TRYING TO REWRITE yet another rule of the retail industry.
In the past few decades, as Sam Walton opened warehouse-like stores across suburbia, the company transformed the way merchandise travels from factories to Store shelves to consumers. Now Wal-Mart is shaking up the cozy market research industry by refusing to play ball with competitors.
As of July, Wal-Mart will no longer sell its cash-register data to market researchers like AC Nielsen and IRI. The pullout presents a challenge to the $6 billion research sector, which aggregates sales data to sell to manufacturers and analysts. Can these firms report who's buying what in a timely, comprehensive fashion without the cooperation of the world's largest retailer?
Independent market research is used in industries ranging from automotive to travel. Research firms generally collect sales data from competing companies by promising to return aggregated data for the entire industry. While the crunched numbers don't necessarily break out each company's performance, they allow each party to see how its performance compares with the whole sector.
The data is gathered in two ways. Researchers conduct weekly surveys on the shopping habits of set panels of thousands of households. They also receive sales data directly from cashiers.
Wal-Mart, however, has concluded that manufacturers and other retailers need data from Wal-Mart more than it needs sales data from its competitors. "We have figured out a way to obtain that information ourselves," says Wal-Mart spokesman Bill Wertz.
It's possible that Wal-Mart's move is a ploy to squeeze more money out of the research firms. Industry analysts estimate that each company pays Wal-Mart several million dollars annually, and they speculate the retailer may just want more. That's similar to what happened with Safeway in the United Kingdom in 1996. For six months the supermarket chain stopped providing data to AC Nielsen until the two companies reached new terms.
But Wal-Mart's move may be more than a negotiating ploy. Larry Gold, publisher of the Inside Research newsletter, says Wal-Mart already sells some data directly to manufacturers; the company may have decided that it no longer needs a middleman.
Research firms are playing down the significance of Wal-Mart's decision. Other retail chains, like Kmart and Target, continue to provide such data. In the meantime, IRI is looking to expand the size of its survey from 55,000 to 65,000 households. The information from that survey will have more detailed product information than what Wal-Mart provides, and it will come from a wider geographic sample, says Ed Kuehnle, IRI's president of North America. "We're talking to our customers -- retailers, manufacturers and Wall Street analysts -- telling them that the world is not going to end because of this," he says.
However, the survey data can be less reliable than cashier data, as it is more vulnerable to human reporting errors, analysts say. What's more, it can take a month to deliver the data to manufacturers, while Wal-Mart's point-of-sale data can be ready in as few as 12 days.
The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. Wal-Mart, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, is the largest majority private employer[4] Walmart is also the largest grocery retailer in the United States. In 2009, it generated 51% of its US$258 billion sales in the U.S. from grocery business.[5] It also owns and operates the Sam's Club retail warehouses in North America.he Retail Forward
Abstract
In five years, Wal-Mart could be twice as big as it is today if it increases its market share in major categories such as food and apparel and newer areas such as gasoline. In order to grow, Wal-Mart will need to sell new categories of merchandise, operate in new geographic locations (including those in the US that it has not yet tapped), appeal to new consumers, obtain greater share of wallet from its existing customers, and operate in new business sectors.
In The Age of Wal-Mart, Retail Forward explores five likely growth strategies Wal-Mart may pursue, examining rationales, prospects, and likely effects on competitors and suppliers. These possible growth strategies include:
1. Food. Wal-Mart’s growth in the past decade was largely the result of its enormous foray into the food market. Although Wal-Mart is now the market leader, it still has a long way to go. Retail Forward predicts that, by 2006, there will be over 2,000 Wal-Mart Supercenters in the US and food sales at Wal-Mart Supercenters will account for approximately one-third of the national increase in spending on food.
2. Foreign. While further foreign acquisitions are expected, Wal-Mart will not be successful as a global retailer if its only advantage is price. It must also provide a superior shopping experience, strong localized merchandising, and a clear differentiation from competitors. However, it is unlikely that Wal-Mart’s overseas expansion will move swiftly enough to fuel the company’s growth engine. The company’s most probable courses of action will be 1) to grow its existing businesses in the US, extending customer reach, and 2) to move into other businesses in the US with the same velocity it moved into food.
3. Fashion and Family. To get more out of existing stores, and to attract a more affluent consumer, Wal-Mart must ramp up efforts in apparel and home goods. Wal-Mart is already a major apparel force in certain categories, Retail Forward’s annual shopper survey indicates. If Wal-Mart succeeds in convincing shoppers to view the retailer as a destination for fashion needs, it will have a huge impact on the market. Wal-Mart will need to focus on expanding its range of merchandise, improving the quality and variety of its non-food assortment, and developing strong private and exclusive labels.
4. Format. To reach more markets and more consumers, Wal-Mart will drive growth through multi-channel delivery of its core businesses. By opening smaller food stores, developing formats for urban shoppers, and potentially leveraging its strengths by developing drug, dollar, and convenience stores, Wal-Mart could overcome the limitations created by its Supercenter focus.
5. Fringe. Wal-Mart will seek to test the outer boundaries of what consumers are willing to allow Wal-Mart to be. The company will seek to expand at the fringe of its core business by developing sales in highly new and unusual categories. Wal-Mart’s aggressive rollout of fueling stations could be followed closely with the company selling used cars, financial services, home improvement, and foodservice.
The Age of Wal-Mart Awaits
Wal-Mart’s growth over the next five years will revolutionize global retail markets and render the retail industry and supplier industries far more consolidated than they are today. However, its size will test the limits of its organizational scale. The challenge for Wal-Mart will be to sustain growth without straying from its core strengths, and without spreading its wings too thinly.
The mass merchandiser no longer wants to share its sales information with the rest of the retail industry. Can market research firms live without it?
WAL-MART IS TRYING TO REWRITE yet another rule of the retail industry.
In the past few decades, as Sam Walton opened warehouse-like stores across suburbia, the company transformed the way merchandise travels from factories to Store shelves to consumers. Now Wal-Mart is shaking up the cozy market research industry by refusing to play ball with competitors.
As of July, Wal-Mart will no longer sell its cash-register data to market researchers like AC Nielsen and IRI. The pullout presents a challenge to the $6 billion research sector, which aggregates sales data to sell to manufacturers and analysts. Can these firms report who's buying what in a timely, comprehensive fashion without the cooperation of the world's largest retailer?
Independent market research is used in industries ranging from automotive to travel. Research firms generally collect sales data from competing companies by promising to return aggregated data for the entire industry. While the crunched numbers don't necessarily break out each company's performance, they allow each party to see how its performance compares with the whole sector.
The data is gathered in two ways. Researchers conduct weekly surveys on the shopping habits of set panels of thousands of households. They also receive sales data directly from cashiers.
Wal-Mart, however, has concluded that manufacturers and other retailers need data from Wal-Mart more than it needs sales data from its competitors. "We have figured out a way to obtain that information ourselves," says Wal-Mart spokesman Bill Wertz.
It's possible that Wal-Mart's move is a ploy to squeeze more money out of the research firms. Industry analysts estimate that each company pays Wal-Mart several million dollars annually, and they speculate the retailer may just want more. That's similar to what happened with Safeway in the United Kingdom in 1996. For six months the supermarket chain stopped providing data to AC Nielsen until the two companies reached new terms.
But Wal-Mart's move may be more than a negotiating ploy. Larry Gold, publisher of the Inside Research newsletter, says Wal-Mart already sells some data directly to manufacturers; the company may have decided that it no longer needs a middleman.
Research firms are playing down the significance of Wal-Mart's decision. Other retail chains, like Kmart and Target, continue to provide such data. In the meantime, IRI is looking to expand the size of its survey from 55,000 to 65,000 households. The information from that survey will have more detailed product information than what Wal-Mart provides, and it will come from a wider geographic sample, says Ed Kuehnle, IRI's president of North America. "We're talking to our customers -- retailers, manufacturers and Wall Street analysts -- telling them that the world is not going to end because of this," he says.
However, the survey data can be less reliable than cashier data, as it is more vulnerable to human reporting errors, analysts say. What's more, it can take a month to deliver the data to manufacturers, while Wal-Mart's point-of-sale data can be ready in as few as 12 days.