Retail industry

• In 2005 The Retail sales in US had reached US$2.8 trillion excluding motor vehicles
and parts dealers and it had surpassed $5 Trillion in the year 2017.
• The retailers in US competed at local, regional and national levels with some of the
major chains such as Walmart and Costco.
• In addition to the traditional one store owner operated retailer, the industry
included formats such as discount stores, department stores, variety and
convenience stores, speciality stores, supermarkets, supercentres, Internet retailers
and catalogue retailer.
• Major retailers competed for employees and store locations, as well as for the
customers.
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Background

• Walmart Stores Inc also known as (Walmart) is an American multinational retail

corporation  that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores,
and grocery stores headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas.

• The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 and incorporated on October 31,
1969.
• Walmart has more than 6500 stores worldwide including stores in all 50 statesof
United states as well as international stores such as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Costa
Rica, L Salvador, Guatemala, Han-do-rus, Mexico, Puerto Rico and UK and it also has
joint venture agreements in China and had majority stake in a leading japanese retail
chain known as Seiyu but recently it sold to other company.
• Walmart had 1.3m employees in the US and total of 1.8m throughout the world and
was estimated that Walmart served more than 138m customers each week.
• Walmart was also predominantly known for its discount stores, which offered
merchandise such as apparel, small appliances, housewares, electronics etc
• The main strategy is to provide a broad assortment of quality merchandise and services at
‘everyday low-prices”

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• Along with discount and grocery stores, Walmart also had combined discount and
grocery stores, membership only warehouse stores also known as (Sam’s club) and
smaller grocery stores which was popurarly known as Neighbourhood markets
• In the yr 1989, Walmart was voted as ‘Retailer of the decade”
• Walmart is also considered to be the world’s largest company by revenue with
US$514.405 billion from the Fortune global 500 companies list in 2019. Also the
largest private employer in the world with 2.2 million employees.
• In the general merchandise area of Wlmart, its competitors are Sears and Target.
With speciality retailers including Gap and ltd. Its department store competitors are
Dillard, Federated and J.C Penney and grocery store competitors were Kroger.
Albertsons and Safeway.
• The major membership only warehouse competitor was Costco wholesale