The Marketing Environment: Wal-Mart Corporation
Wal-Mart is one of the world's greatest assets to most people. It provides consumer's a place they can go to virtually get anything they need from, car repairs, to groceries, prescription's, even the latest toys and electronics. With all that said, this paper relates to the different forces in business that affects business: competitive, economic, political + legal + regulatory, technological, cultural + social, demographic, and natural forces. Although there are technically seven we are going to focus on competitive, political, technological, and natural forces.
Competitive Force
Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer and second largest corporation. It is the largest private employer in the United States and Mexico. Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States, with an estimated 20% of the retail grocery and consumables business, and the largest toy seller in the United States, with an estimated 45% of the retail toy business, having surpassed Toys"R" Us in the late 1990s. Wal-Mart has 1,929 stores which as of 2005 sales figures totaled about $155,477,000,000 in sales. Wal-Marts revenue as of 2006 was an estimated $315,654 billion USD, net income $11.231billion USD, and employs more than 1.8 million employees.1
Wal -Marts' major competitors are the Kroger co. #2 in annual sales, Albertsons' Inc. #3, Safeway,Inc. #4, and Costco Wholesale Group #5. Now even though Wal- Mart is leading the way in total sales the #2 and #3 businesses lead in way with total # of stores. The Kroger Co. has 3,302 with Albertsons at 2,476 stores nationwide. Wal-Marts total sales for that year alone was beating its 2nd place competition alone by more than 80 billion dollars. Wal-Marts major competitors in low-end general merchandise department would include Sears Holding Corporation', the slowly diminishing K-Mart chain, and Target whose trying different