Mention "Wal-Mart," the name is no stranger to Chinese consumers, it is well-known U.S. retailers. Its founder, Sam. Wal-Mart in the town of Dayton in 1945 and started operation in Bentonville, retail trade, after decades of persistent struggle, and finally establish the Kingdom of the world's largest retail trade. Sam. Walton had been "Forbes" magazine as the nation's first billionaires, but also because of its outstanding entrepreneurial spirit of President George W. Bush in 1991 was awarded the "Presidential Medal of Freedom," which was an American citizen's highest honor.
Wal-Mart is the nation's highest rate of return on investment companies. Its investment rate of return of 46%, even in times of recession in 1991, up 32%.
His history is far from the U.S. retail industry a century-old store "Sears" So long. However, in a short period of 30 years time, it will grow to become the nation and the world's largest retailer.
At present, Wal-Mart's business philosophy, management skills, has become a hot topic in American management circles.
Competitive strategy of encircling the cities from rural areas
Wal-Mart's early days, faced with a powerful Sith, Kmart and other retail giants. At that time, these large retail enterprise business is largely concentrated in large and medium cities, but for small towns are ignored. Because they believe that small towns do not offer retail business conditions, more than 25,000 in population only to set up shop in the area, but Sam. Walton, however, seize this aircraft, developed and adopted a "encircling the cities" strategy, the selected small towns serve market segments. Their specific implementation strategy is based on the state as a unit, a county a county filled, until the entire state of market saturation, and then back to another state expansion. By a county to a state, a state to a region, then a regional expansion throughout the country.