Walmart's Five Year Stock 2012

The Truth about Walmart Being the world’s fourth largest retailer Walmart still keeps growing, and Walmart CEO earns $1,034 more per year than the average Walmart worker (Kavoussi). Karen Olsson’s article “Up Against Walmart” suggest that the growth of Walmart does not help an individual due to many job problems that are present this is important because it can affect the future of the workers. The problem and the effect in Sebastian Mallaby’s article “Progressive Walmart. Really,” suggests that Walmart helps overcome all the negative criticism of a job company. On the controversy despite their different viewpoints, both articles mention minority discrimination, corporate abuses, and health care.

Penney rose significantly? Source: Ycharts During the inflated years of the last bull market (04-07), which was the intro into one of the biggest financial meltdowns in history, J.C. Penney climbed significantly; being a strong retail player in many shareholders portfolios. Unfortunately, we all know what happened to J.C. Penney straight after the financial meltdown. It got into severe trouble and with Ron Johnson as replacement CEO, the J.C. Penney ship was about to sink.

Some people may wonder how, with such low prices, Wal-Mart can sustain such a large profit margin. Well according to Jim Hightower, that answer lies within Wal-Mart’s workforce. Hightower believes that Wal-Mart is tricking its workers into thinking they are, “one big, happy family,” when in reality those workers are being exploited. According to Jim, Wal-Mart is diverting their workers from the actual issues such as, “fair wages, hiring discrimination, or unionization.” This is backed up in the 2004 documentary aired by PBS called, “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?”

Walmart does have their focus on low prices but lately Walmart has been bringing in some specialty products such as Paula Deen cookware, Rachael Ray cookware and Calphalon cookware. Target already had these brands so Walmart is changing their inventory to reflect what the consumers are looking for hoping to increase their sales. Also in return Target is cutting their everyday prices on their inventory also so both are taking cues from each other this will increase the choices that consumers have at both stores. As far as Costco and Sam’s Club of Walmart I personally have been to both and as for me I like Sam’s better than Costco due to Sam’s has a better selection than

The following is a list of written analysis based on the financial statements of the publicly traded corporation PetSmart. Our focus in this second discussion of PetSmart will be on the items considering inventory methods used, value of inventory, purchase prices, expenditures, initial cost of merchandise, gross profit calculation, inventory turnover for year ended Feb, 2nd 2014 as well as comparing PetSmart’s ratios to industry averages which are currently 41% and 7.7 times. In hopes to make a good estimate of PetSmart’s over all worth to allow our organization to make concise and effectively controlled decisions. From viewing of the financial statements it can be determined that PetSmart values inventory at the lower of either cost or market.

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Many corporations move to the mandate of a global capitalistic economy, and over the past quarter-century, several large multi-store retailers have experienced considerable growth. Wal-Mart is one of the leading industry giants with a presence in scores of markets that virtually all other vendors cannot compete. In a 2003 New York Times article “Ideas & Trends: Discount Nation: Is Wal-Mart Good for America?” Columnist Steve Lohrdec reported that “Wal-Mart points the way to a grim Darwinian world of bankrupt competitors, low wages, inadequate health benefits, jobs lost to imports and destroyed downtowns and rural areas across America.”

In the video, "Is Walmart Good for America", Hendrick Smith investigates how Walmart is changing the American economy. Throughout the video, one thing is made clear, Walmart is a monopsony, being that it has effective control of the production of many of the items that the company buys. Suppliers come to Walmart looking to negotiate with buyers for large contracts, unfortunately for them, there is no room for negotiation. In the video, a former manager of Walmart had this to say "Wal-Mart calls the shots. If you want to do business with us, if you want to stay in business, then you're going to do it our way.

Wal-Mart is a monopoly that excludes any competition. As presented in the documentary Wal-Mart:

‘Is Wal-Mart Good for America?’ On PBS Frontline, May 11, 2015 ‘Is Wal-Mart Good for America?’ is a documentary that examines the relationship between Wal-Mart’s rapid growth and its impact on the US economy ever since it blossomed in trade productivity in the mid 20th century. The documentary, published on February 2014 by PBS Frontline, conveys a deep understanding of how Wal-Mart changed the living standards of many Americans and took consumerism and retail logistics in the U.S. to another level; by cutting costs through offshore outsourcing to China and employing cheap Chinese labor. The documentary focuses on the changing relationship between big retailers and manufacturers and the transition in pricing and decision-making.

Two college dropouts borrowed money from family and friends to open a small business called Saferway in Texas. This occurred in 1978 by John Mackey and Renee Lawson (Hardy). In 1980 the two joined forces with Craig Weller and Mark Skiles and created Whole Foods Market. Seven months later Texas got hit with the worst flood in history.

Walmart was founded in the summer of 1962 by Kingfisher, Oklahoma native Sam Walton. Although Walton’s original vision for the store was relatively modest, the half century since its founding has seen Walmart morph into one of the biggest companies in the world. Today headed by one Doug McMillon, Walmart boasts more than 5000 stores in the United States of America alone and employs more than 1.5 million people. Walmart is undoubtedly an American institution, yet each Walmart store feels like its own little country. Walmart seems to have its own laws and customs and the people who shop their on a regular basis appear almost primitive in their behavior as they go about raiding the store’s shelves and wrestling with fellow customers for discount flat screen televisions and bulk packages of two-ply toilet paper.

During the past decade, Wal-Mart, Kmart and Target three retail giants generate a combined sale of $123 billion (External Analysis Wal-Mart 2015). The success of the retail industry contributes largely to the advancements of science and technology and reduced costs. In the future, the success of Wal-Mart still relies on consumers’ concerns for value shopping and saving money. The company should pay close attention to the needs of customers and provide high-value and low-price products for consumers. Industry environment analysis includes five aspects: threat of new entrants, power of suppliers, inter-firm rivalry, power of buyers and threat of substitutes.

According to the recent research of Hierarchy Structure group, they have introduced the Walmart Business Hierarchy. Walmart was first introduced to this world in 1969. It is one of the worlds’ famous grocery stores and supermarkets. It is also widely operating in different countries around the world. As Walmart is a huge company, they require a structured and strict hierarchical system in the company.

Vision, Mission Statement "Price Leadership Drives Global Performance" is the Wal-Mart visualization statement. The management of Wal-Mart emphasises on price leadership in every market since pricing strategy is the direct approach to reach performance and attract customers. In order to implement price leadership, they stated "Save Money, Live Better", which remains as relevant now as it was in 1962 by Sam Walton. The mission is that everybody is able to purchase products in Wal-Mart because the stores offers low price products to them.