Walmart: Largest Private Employer In The US

Walmart Name: Course Code: Date: Walmart With the development of economic globalization and informatization, the retail industry worldwide is undergoing a revolutionary change. From a worldwide perspective, the traditional department store industry is gradually losing its former glory, while modern large-scale supermarket chains and supermarkets have begun to dominate. In the face of changing retail industry owing to the technology-powered online stores like Amazon, Walmart has remained resilient, profitable and a dominant player in these two industries; retail and e-commerce. Walmart was founded in Arkansas in 1962 by American retail legend Sam Walton. After more than 40 years of development, Walmart has become the largest private employer in the United States and the world's largest retail chain. Currently. Moreover, Walmart has opened more than 8,000 stores in 15 countries around the world, and with more than 2.1 million employees and 200 million visitors per week to Walmart. It is worth mentioning that Walmart's distribution systems, electronic data systems, and marketing strategies are models in the industry though it continues to grapple with few problems. Since its inception, Walmart has focused on creating an efficient supply chain to enable it to undercut the retail average prices. Its business model is low prices and high-volume sales to make profits. Thus, Walton invested into creating an efficient supply chain that could help the company to reduce its prices significantly. Each year, it has continuously resolved challenges into its supply chain to ensure efficiency and profitability. It has also invested into having many warehouses which are at an average proximal distance from their stores to ensure they can always deliver goods on demand to their stores on time for the convenience of their customers and guarantee their profitability. Throughout its operations, Walmart Inc has been laced with scandals most of them stemming from their business model which has been viewed as a threat to local businesses and how the company treats its employees. Some states like Vermont staged a spirited fight to bar Walmart from setting up a store in their county to protect local businesses CITATION Lec10 \l 1033 (Lecavalier, 2010). In other states like California it has been denied an operating license in Inglewood.it has also been sued for bad human resource management practices and low salaries for its employees CITATION Bil12 \l 1033 (Quinn, 2012). Walmart critics have pegged their rhetoric on its ‘questionable’ business practices and called for consumer boycott among other strategies aimed to dethrone the retail giant. Despite being an industry leader in retail, Walmart continues aggressive marketing. It portrays their stores as the only places people can get value for their money with their signature message ‘ every day low prices.’ It aggressively markets its low prices to attract the bottom income quintile whoa re their main customers. It also brands it property especially the trucks which help create brand awareness. Through its marketing department, the company has run various brand awareness campaigns to their target markets and population through retail-tainment, lighting, and signage among other strategies. The m...