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CASE 15
Walmart’s Expansion into
Specialty Online Retailing
Rochelle R. Brunson
Baylor University
F
or the company that began as a discount retailer in
small town USA, Walmart’s strategic moves from
2016 through 2018 indicated a possible departure
from its traditional brick and mortar retailing strategy
targeting price-conscious shoppers. Its series of acqui-
sitions of upscale online retailers and the launch of
an online business selling high-end mattresses and
bedding signaled management’s acknowledgement
that the company was at a strategic inflection point.
The company had ended 2017 as the world’s largest
retailer with global revenues of nearly $486 billion, but
the growth of Amazon and an increasing consumer
preference for online shopping caused Walmart to
evaluate its brick and mortar strategy. The company
had responded to Amazon’s success with the introduc-
tion of new services such as Store Pickup for everyday
items and Curbside Pickup for groceries, but its series
of acquisitions of online retailers during the 2016 to
2018 period reflected an acknowledgment by Walmart
management that consumers not only wanted low
prices, but also wanted maximum convenience and
uniquely differentiated products.
COMPANY HISTORY
When Sam Walton was a franchisee of a Ben Franklin
variety store in the late 1940s, he had an idea of how
this type of retailer could be more profitable. He had
been successful in negotiating good deals with sup-
pliers, so he reasoned that instead of leaving his store
prices the same and increasing his earnings, he could
lower prices on his products and pass the savings along
to customers. He believed by following this strategy,
he could increase the volume of his sales and become
even more profitable. Walton offered his idea to the Ben
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Marlene M. Reed
Baylor University
Franklin management, but they were not interested.
Therefore, he and his brother opened their Walton’s 5
& 10 in 1950 in Bentonville, Arkansas. Later, he and his
brother decided to open their own stores, and the first
Walmart store was opened in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas.
Another part of Walton’s strategy was to focus
solely on small town populations that he thought
would welcome a large discount store. The Walton
brothers typically opened stores in towns with popu-
lations of 5,000 to 25,000, and the stores drew from
a large radius.1 By the end of the 1960s, the Walton
brothers had opened 18 Walmart stores while still own-
ing 15 Ben Franklin franchises in Arkansas, Missouri,
Kansas, and Oklahoma. All of these ventures became
incorporated as Walmart stores in 1969.2
The company went public in 1970 trading over
the counter, and then in 1972 the stock was listed on
the New York Stock Exchange. At this time, the com-
pany began building its own warehouses in order to
have the ability to order large quantities and store the
merchandise. As a result of this tactic, they decided
to build stores in a 200 square mile radius around the
warehouses/distribution centers.
In 1983, the company opened its first three
Sam’s Wholesale Clubs and began moving into larger
city markets. Four years later, the company acquired
18 Supersaver Wholesale Clubs that were converted
into Sam’s Clubs. By 1991, the company had 148 Sam’s
Clubs, which were 100,000 square foot discount
membership warehouse clubs that stimulated the
growth of warehouse clubs in the 1990s and into the
21st century.
Copyright ©2018 by Rochelle R. Brunson and Marlene M. Reed. All
rights reserved.
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Case 15  Walmart’s Expansion into Specialty Online Retailing C-163

The company became the center of criticism in
1990. Owners of small businesses in the towns where
Walmart operated suggested that they were being
driven out of business because they could not com-
pete with the store’s economies of scale. However,
the criticism did not affect the company’s revenues,
and during the 1990s the store became the number
one retailer in the United States. The company had
now moved beyond small towns into large cities. In
1991, the company ventured outside the United States
for the first time by entering into a joint venture with
Cifra, S.A. de C.V., the largest retailer in Mexico. By
2018, over 260 million customers were shopping at
Walmart’s 11,723 stores in 28 countries each year.
By 2018, Walmart was not only the largest
retailer in the world but also the largest corporation
in the world. Within the United States, Walmart had
more than 1.2 million employees, 1,478 Walmart
discount stores in all 50 states, 1,471 Walmart
Supercenters that were combined discount out-
lets and grocery stores, 538 Sam’s Clubs, and 64
Walmart Neighborhood Markets. During 2017,
Walmart had revenues of $485.6 billion while employ-
ing 2.3 million associates throughout the world. The
company’s consolidated income statements for 2015
through 2017 are presented in Exhibit  1. Exhibit  2
presents Walmart’s consolidated balance sheets for
2015 through 2017.

EXHIBIT 1 Walmart’s Consolidated Income Statements 2015–2017

(amounts in millions except for share data)

Years Ended January 31

2017 2016 2015

Revenues:
   Net sales $481,317 $478,614 $482,229
    Membership & other income      4,556   3,516    3,422
Total Revenues 485,873 482,130 485,651
Costs & Expenses:
    Cost of sales 361,256 360,984 365,086
    Operating, selling G&A expenses     101,853     97,041      93,418
Operating Income: 22,764 24,105 27,147
Interest:
   Debt 2,004 2,017 2,161
    Capital lease & financing 323 521 300
   Interest income                   (100)                   (81)                (113)
   Net interest 2,267 2,467 2,348
Income from continuing operations 20,497 21,638 24,799
Provision for income taxes               6,204          6,558           7,985
Income from continuing operations 14,293 15,080 16,814
Income from discontinued operations – – 285
Consolidated net income 14,293 15,080 17,090
Consolidated income attributable to noncontrolling interest (650) (386) (736)
Consolidated income attributable to Walmart $13,643 $14,694 $16,363
Basic net income per common share $4.40 $4.58 $5.01

Source: Walmart Inc. 2017 10-K.

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C-164 PART 2  Cases in Crafting and Executing Strategy

EXHIBIT 2  Walmart’s Consolidated Balance Sheets 2016–2017 (amounts in millions)

As of January 31

2016 2017

Assets
Current assets:
   Cash and cash equivalents $      6,867 $      8,705
  Receivables, net 5,835 5,624
  Inventories 43,046 44,469
  Prepaid expenses           1,941            1,441
Total current assets 57,689 60,239
Property and equipment 179,492 176,958
Less accumulated depreciation    (71,782)     (66,787)
   Property and equipment, net 107,710 110,171
   Property under capital lease and financing obligations 11,637 11,096
   Less accumulated amortization         (5,169)          (4,751)
   Property under capital lease and financing obligations, net 6,468 6,345
Goodwill 17,037 16,695
Other assets and deferred charges           9,921            6,131
Total assets $198,825 $199,581
Liabilities and equity
Current liabilities:
  Short-term borrowing $       1,099 $       2,708
  Accounts payable 41,433 38,487
  Accrued liabilities 20,654 19,607
   Accrued income taxes 921 521
   Long-term debt due within one year 2,256 2,745
   Capital lease and financing obligations due within one year 565 551
Total current liabilities 66,928 64,619
Long-term debt 36,015 38,214
Long-term capital lease and financing obligations 6,003 3,816
Deferred income taxes and other 9,344 7,321
Equity
  Common stock 305 317
   Capital in excess of par value 2,371 1,805

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Case 15  Walmart’s Expansion into Specialty Online Retailing C-165
  Retained earnings
   Accumulated other comprehensive loss
Total Walmart shareholders’ equity
   Nonredeemable noncontrolling interest
Total equity
Total liabilities and equity
Source: Walmart Inc. 2017 10-K.
WALMART’S ACQUISITIONS
OF ONLINE RETAILERS, 2016
THROUGH 2018
From 2016 to 2018, Walmart had followed a strategy
of increasing its online presence in order to compete
with its largest competitor—Amazon. The acquisi-
tions were an attempt to reach urban Millennials that
Walmart had not been able to reach in the past. The
retail behemoth’s average customer was less wealthy,
much older, and less urban than the customer who
normally shops at Target and Amazon. Walmart
vowed that it would not invest billions building its
digital presence while reducing new store openings.
Exhibit 3 presents a list of the acquisitions the com-
pany made between 2016 and 2018.
Jet.com
In 2015, Jet.com (an online retailer) was launched by
e-commerce pioneer, Marc Lore. The mission of the
company was to compete in the crowded online mar-
ketplace against the leader, Amazon. From the com-
pany’s headquarters in Hoboken, New Jersey, Lore
was able to raise $500 million in venture capital fund-
ing from Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Google Ventures,
Forerunner Ventures, and Bain Capital.
EXHIBIT 3  Timeline of Acquisitions and Allswell Launch
August 2016 Jan. 2017 Feb. 2017 March 2017
Jet.com ShoeBuy Moosejaw Modcloth
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As of January 31
2016 2017
89,354 90,021
(14,232) (11,597)
77,798 80,546
                2,737                 3,065
           80,535            83,611
$198,825 $199,581
The Jet target customer was a Millennial, urban
dweller, with a higher income. The company promoted
such products as La Croix seltzer, fresh produce, and
ethical cleaning products. Just 13 months after its
launch, Walmart purchased the company for $3 billion
in an all-cash transaction in August 2016. Walmart
made Jet a wholly-owned subsidiary. An immediate
concern of Jet’s customers was whether the products
they ordered from the company would arrive in a
Walmart blue box instead of the purple Jet box, but the
company continued to use the purple Jet box.
Jet.com was a reseller of Apple products, includ-
ing the iPhone, whereas Amazon carried some Apple
products including Mac computers but not the iPhone,
iPad, and Apple Watch. Those products were sold by
third-party companies. This gave Jet.com and Walmart
an advantage over Amazon with Apple products.3
In terms of Internet sales, in 2017 Walmart.com
had $14 billion while Amazon had $83 billion. Jet
had a customer base of more than 400,000 new shop-
pers being added monthly and an average of 25,000
daily processed orders. In addition, the company
used the most innovative technology that rewards
customers with savings on products that were bought
and shipped together. This practice reduced the supply
chain and logistics costs that were often hidden in
the price of products.
June 2017 Feb. 2018 May 2018
Bonobos Allswell Flipkart
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C-166 PART 2  Cases in Crafting and Executing Strategy
Since this deal was completed, Walmart’s
e-commerce sales climbed 63 percent. Meanwhile,
Walmart’s online inventory had grown from 10 million
items to 67 million items. The company was also
leveraging its brick and mortar stores by expanding
grocery pickup service to more than 1,000 stores and
the provision for customer discounts on select items
if they pick them up at the store. This allows them to
compete with Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods.
The strategy for Walmart appears to be to allow
Jet to focus on urban Millennial customers—especially
those in New York, Chicago, Boston, and other
large cities—while Walmart continued to target the
rest of the country. One change in the culture of Jet
occurred after the purchase by Walmart. Whereas Jet
had originally hosted Thursday evening happy hours
for employees, Walmart put an end to the practice
because of their policy against drinking on the job.
ShoeBuy
In January of 2017, the Canadian e-commerce
retailer of footwear Shoes.com closed down its
operations, which included its websites Shoes.com,
OnlineShoes, and ShoeMe.ca and its two brick and
mortar stores in Vancouver and Toronto. At that
time, Walmart stepped in and paid $9 million for
the Shoes.com web address that directs its ShoeBuy
.com unit. In 2015, computer hardware for the first
time took a back seat to apparel and accessories as
the leading category for e-commerce. ShoeBuy was
a leading online footwear and clothing retailer. The
company was founded in 1999 and was one of the
first companies to sell shoes online. The company
was headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and
Walmart decided to continue to base the company
there and to leave the executive team and over 200
employees in place. This move was another part of
Walmart’s strategy to compete with Amazon who
had bought Zappos, an online shoe retailer, in 2009
for $1.2 billion. Zappos generated over $2 billion
annually in sales.
Moosejaw
Moosejaw was founded in 1992 in Michigan and was
headquartered in Madison Heights, Michigan. The
company was not only a leading e-commerce site for
outdoor enthusiasts, but they also operated 10 brick
and mortar stores. The company carried brands
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such as Patagonia, The North Face, Marmot, and
Arc’teryx. Their lines included an assortment of gear
and clothing for camping, climbing, hiking, yoga, bik-
ing, swimming, and all of the snow sports. The com-
pany had strong industry relationships and offered a
wide assortment of products.
On February 13, 2017, Walmart acquired Moosejaw.
This acquisition was a part of the company’s grow-
ing line of e-commerce operations. In addition to
Moosejaw’s online presence, it also had 10 physical
stores. Walmart paid $51 million for the company
and expects Moosejaw to continue to run as a standalone
operation complementary to Walmart’s other e-commerce
sites. It was anticipated that Moosejaw, a leader
in social media, would help Walmart compete for
Millennials. The company was number 261 on Internet
Retailer’s top 500 stores in 2017.
Moosejaw’s 350 employees and its CEO Eoin
Comerford would remain in Michigan. One of the
goals of this purchase by Walmart was to gain a
competitive advantage against Amazon in the sport-
ing goods category. Although Walmart’s retail stores
have a sporting goods department, the price points
were on the lower end in the brick and mortar stores
due to the limited amount of space and number of
products that can be stocked. Walmart’s e-commerce
site carried more price points, but the acquisition of
Moosejaw would expand the outdoor/sporting goods
category to a new customer that Walmart was not
currently reaching.
2016 was an extremely competitive year for out-
door retailers. In May, Sports Authority was liqui-
dated after being unsuccessful in its quest to find a
buyer. In addition, Eastern Mountain Sports filed
for bankruptcy, and there was concern that Gander
Mountain was in a financial crisis. Bass Pro Shops
was in the process of acquiring Cabelas, and even
Under Armour was finding the competition very
difficult. Nike had its own issues by selling through
their branded retail stores, website, Amazon, and still
through their traditional retail customers who were
beginning to complain that they were being bypassed
as Nike was selling directly to the consumer.
Modcloth
This online company had a very interesting begin-
ning and a quirky, vintage product line. Susan Gregg
Koger started this company the summer before her
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freshman year in college out of her interest in vintage
and thrift store clothing. She taught herself how to
build a website and stocked apparel for women who
were nerdy without shame. Her high school sweet-
heart, who would become her husband, helped her
grow the company. The company continually gath-
ered feedback from their customers through the use
of social media and email.
Then in January of 2015, some venture capitalists
and a new CEO named Matthew Kaness took over the
store. Kaness had previously been the Chief Strategy
Officer of Urban Outfitters. The new leaders abruptly
began to change the culture of the online store. Kaness
launched a new program called “Be the Buyer,” which
allowed the customers to decide which products the
company would keep and which ones they would
drop. In addition, whereas the founder had specifi-
cally focused on clothing for the plus-size woman who
was normally underserved, the new leadership began
scaling back on offering the larger sizes. Many of the
Modcloth’s customers and employees began to com-
plain about the new direction of the company.
In March of 2017, Walmart purchased Modcloth
for approximately $75 million. This was a boon to
Modcloth, which formerly had relied on venture
capitalists for funding, but now were being financed
by the world’s largest retailer. Walmart knew that a
company often had to tie up money along the sup-
ply chain to get the best costs on fabrics six to nine
months out.
An interesting departure for Walmart (and Modcloth)
occurred on Black Friday of 2017. Traditionally, Black
Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) had been known to
be the biggest day in sales for retailers. Although Walmart
had found in the past that the day after Thanksgiving
was its biggest day of the year, Modcloth chose to close
its operations that day and donate clothes valued at
$5 million to a nonprofit organization called “Dress for
Success.” That was the first time Modcloth had closed
on Black Friday, and some observers speculated that they
had not been able to close in the past because they did not
have the backing of Walmart.
Bonobos
In 2017, Bonobos was launched selling chino pants on
the Internet. Since then, the company had expanded its
offerings assortment to include men’s shirts and suits.
The company was one of the leading apparel brands
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introduced on the Internet in the United States. In
addition, the company had opened dozens of brick and
mortar stores (called “Guideshops”), and it had contin-
ued to place a great deal of emphasis on its generous
shipping and return policies for online shopping.
Walmart, through its Jet.com brand, purchased
Bonobos in June of 2017 for $310 million and plans
to sell its products through its Jet.com site. This
purchase, along with that of Modcloth, was a depar-
ture from Walmart’s big box image. Bonobos was a
premium-priced retailer that offers distinctive upscale
fashions for men. These purchases suggest that
Walmart was aggressively seeking to meet Amazon on
its own playing field—the Internet. Lewis and Dart sug-
gested, “Just as Walmart’s deep pockets gave Jet.com
a limitless runway, it will do the same for Bonobos.
But the larger seismic event was that this was just
one more step for Walmart in its quest to become
Amazon’s worst nightmare, while Amazon was doing
another one-up with its acquisition of Whole Foods.
This was just the beginning of the battle of the behe-
moths.”4 In the past, Walmart was viewed by observers
as the leading grocery products retailer in the country.
In 2008, Walmart’s grocery business accounted for 47
percent of their revenues, and by 2015 this percent-
age had increased to 56 percent. However, rising food
prices in 2018 were eroding their very thin profit mar-
gins in the SuperCenter stores.
A trend driving both Amazon and Walmart, as
evidenced by their recent acquisitions, was channel
of distribution consolidation. Bonobos had suggested
that they have no plans to offer their $98 chinos or
$128 dress shirts in Walmart’s retail stores. The
price point for Walmart’s menswear was closer to
$10 to $30. Neil Saunders, Managing Director of the
research firm GlobalData Retail, suggested: “One of
the reasons Walmart had acquired businesses like Jet
and Bonobos was because they want to develop a pre-
mium offering that was very difficult to develop within
the Walmart business. But it’s very clear that these
were separate vehicles—selling higher-end brands and
pushing up price points. That really goes against the
fundament tenets on which Walmart was built.”5
Allswell
In February of 2018, Walmart launched its own mat-
tress and bedding brand to be sold exclusively on the
Internet through the website AllswellHome.com.
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C-168 PART 2  Cases in Crafting and Executing Strategy
The mattress industry was worth $29 billion annu-
ally, and Walmart decided to enter that market at the
higher end with products for discriminating customers.
As a part of the company’s enticement to consumers,
Allswell was offering a 100-day free trial of its mat-
tresses. The brand had two offerings of the memory
foam mattress—The Softer One and The Firmer One.
In addition, Allswell offers four limited-edition bed-
ding sets called “Bedscapes.” Allswell’s king-sized mat-
tress was named the “Supreme Queen” in honor of all
women whom they believe deserve the highest honor.
The name “Allswell” was developed after man-
agement of the company held many conversations
with women shoppers about how they wanted to feel
at home before going to bed. Their duvets have a
luxurious feeling that was the result of a blending of
cotton and Tencel. All of the coverlets and blankets
were stone washed to give them a textured feel. The
price of mattresses ranges from $495 for a twin to
$1,035 for a Supreme Queen. Bedding items range
from $60 to $350.
Customers who buy Allswell products have the
option of ground shipping or white glove delivery. In
addition, the company will take away the customer’s
old mattress at no additional charge. The company had
hired a large number of customer support agents that
they call “Allstars.” Later in February of 2018, Walmart
made an announcement that they were planning to
launch their own line of premium cosmetics on the
Internet and was in talks with some high profile models
to represent the line. The launching by Walmart of their
own luxury bedding company online and the proposed
launching of a premium cosmetic line online appeared
to many to be a shift in strategy from simply acquiring
high-end online stores to launching their own.
Flipkart
Flipkart was founded in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and
Binny Bansal who were Computer Science majors
at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. They
both worked at Amazon in 2006 as software engi-
neers but left when they realized the opportunities of
e-commerce in India. They started their e-commerce
business in India five years before Amazon began
their e-commerce operations in India in 2012. Within
10 years, Flipkart took over the following compa-
nies: WeRead, Chakpak, Mime360, Letsbuy.com,
Myntra.com, Appiterate, Phonepe, Jabong, and
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EBay.in. Flipkart operated as both a marketplace and
a direct seller in the same way that Amazon does.
In May of 2018, Walmart agreed to acquire a
77 percent stake in Flipkart. Walmart suggested that
their long-term goal was to support a public offer-
ing by Flipkart. Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillon,
said the investment was to allow Walmart to become
invested in the growing Indian economy.6
India’s economy was rapidly growing and pro-
jected to replace China as the world’s most populous
country by the year 2024. By 2040, it was projected
to be the second biggest economy behind China.
Between 2004 and 2012, the Indian middle class
doubled in population from 300 million to 600 million,
which made it an even more attractive market for
growth in the coming years.
WALMART’S MISSION AND
GLOBAL ETHICS STATEMENTS
Walmart’s mission statement came from the words
of its founder, Sam Walton:
The secret of successful retailing was to give your custom-
ers what they want. And really, if you think about it from
your point of view as a customer, you want everything:
a wide assortment of good-quality merchandise; the low-
est possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction with what you
buy; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours;
free parking; a pleasant shopping experience.7
Walmart.com, established in January of 2000,
was a subsidiary of Walmart Inc. This online orga-
nization espoused the same mission as the brick
and mortar stores, but had one additional mission—
providing easy access to more of Walmart, which was
evident in the more than 1,000,000 products avail-
able online. The company’s website suggests that it
was passionate about combining the best of the two
worlds—technology and world-class retailing.
Walmart’s global ethics statement was the
following:
Global ethics was responsible for promoting Walmart’s
culture of integrity. This included developing and
upholding our policies for ethical behavior for all of our
stakeholders everywhere we operate. But perhaps most
importantly, it includes raising awareness of ethics poli-
cies and providing channels for stakeholders to bring
ethics concerns to our attention. Global ethics serves
as a guide and resource for ethical decision making,
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provides a confidential and anonymous reporting sys-
tem, and leads a continuing education and communica-
tion system.8
CHANNEL AND BRAND
CONSOLIDATION
A movement affecting many retailers today was chan-
nel and brand consolidation. This consolidation was
often achieved by mergers and acquisitions. In terms
of channel consolidation, there had been a movement
by brick and mortar stores to buy companies that were
operating online, and a reverse consolidation for com-
panies operating on the Internet to either buy or estab-
lish brick and mortar operations. One example of this
was Amazon, an online company, purchasing Whole
Foods that had historically been a brick and mortar
establishment. Perhaps the reason Whole Foods was
willing to be purchased by an online company was the
fact that consumers were distancing themselves from
the traditional supermarket model. Customers desire
a more intimate and innovating shopping experience
such as that offered by online stores.
Channel consolidation, theoretically at least, may
be much easier than brand consolidation. Through
mergers and acquisitions, stores were finding it more
difficult to create synergy and win customers over if
the brands diverge sharply. An example of this and
the risks inherent in brand consolidation was the fol-
lowing: “In the late 1980s, three brands dominated
the U.S. cat food market: Kal Kan, Crave, and Sheba.
Kal Kan and Crave were at the ‘plain’ end of the mar-
ket; Sheba was at the ‘gourmet” end. The first two
merged, despite their different positionings, to create
Whiskas. Five years later, when Whiskas had failed
to achieve the combined market share of Kal Kan
and Crave, the Kal Kan name was reintroduced on
Whiskas packaging—but to only limited success.”9
Another example of brand consolidation was
Walmart teaming up with Lord & Taylor to launch
a flagship store on Walmart.com in the spring of
2018. The specialized online experience offers pre-
mium fashion brands directly from Lord & Taylor.
Denise Incandela, Head of Fashion, Walmart U.S.
e-commerce, suggested, “Our goal was to create a
premium fashion destination on Walmart.com. We
see customers on our site searching for higher-end
items, and we were expanding our business online to
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focus on adding specialized and premium shopping
experiences, starting with fashion.”10
THE FUTURE OF RETAILING
FOR WALMART
Walmart carried a wide assortment of products on
their website that a shopper would never find in
their stores, but the average consumer didn’t know
this. An example was Ralph Lauren women’s shoes,
which were on the website but not in the stores. Neil
Saunders, Global Data Retail Managing Director of
Walmart suggested, “There were many demograph-
ics, especially younger and professional segments,
for whom Walmart was not the destination of choice
online. This isn’t because it doesn’t sell what they want
or because the price or delivery options were subop-
timal; instead, it was because they do not associate
Walmart with online or they default to Amazon.”11
Walmart had revamped its website to look more like
a “lifestyle” website instead of the former cramped
pages of earlier versions of Walmart.com. Walmart
management intended to make sure the Walmart
customer knew that Walmart offers the lowest price
possible. But management was also aware that online
shoppers considered factors beyond price. The com-
pany had addressed the need for convenience with
Store Pickup for online purchases of everyday items
and Curbside Pickup for online purchases of grocer-
ies. Walmart had also revamped its website to con-
nect to local store inventories based upon a user’s
geographic location.
While Walmart’s strategies to capitalize on
opportunities in online retailing and defend against
the threat of Amazon, revenues from these business
units were only a small fraction of its approximate
revenues of $486 billion in 2017. In addition, some
analysts were undecided how Millennials would
view Walmart’s acquisition of a favorite upscale
retail brand such as Shoe.Buy, Moosejaw, Modcloth,
Bonobos, Flipkart, and even the startup Allswell.
Walmart’s management and investors would learn in
time if the billions spent on the acquisition of these
companies would be enough to position this “small
town 5 & 10 retailer” that Sam Walton started in the
1950s into a competitor for Amazon and Alibaba on
the global online retailing playing field.
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 Final PDF to printer

C-170 PART 2  Cases in Crafting and Executing Strategy

ENDNOTES
1 9
Frank, T. A., “A Brief History of Walmart,” February 26, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost Knudsen, Trond Riiber, Finskud, Lars, Tornblom,
Washington Monthly, April 2006. .com/business/economy/walmart/. Richard, and Hogna, Egil, “Brand Consolidation
2 6
Walmart website, Background Information on Browne, Ryan, “Walmart Strikes Deal to Makes a Lot of Economic Sense,” The McKinsey
Walmart Stores, Inc., http://www.walmart.com. Buy a Majority Stake in India’s Flipkart,” Quarterly, Number 4, p.191, 1997.
3 10
Leswing, Kif, “Walmart Just Scored a Huge CNBC.com, May 9, 2018, https://www Grill-Goodman, Jill, “As Walmart’s Online
Victory over Amazon with Apple’s Help,” .cnbc.com/2018/05/09/walmart-agrees- Sales Soar It Pushes Into Premium Fashion,”
Business Insider, May 9, 2018. deal-to-buy-majority-stake-in-indias- November 17, 2017, https://risnews.com/
4
Lewis, Robin, and Dart, Michael, The New flipkart/. walmarts-online-sales-soar-it-pushes-into-
7
Rule of Retail: Competing in the World’s Walmart.com’s History and Mission, premium-fashion/.
11
Toughest Marketplace, 2nd edition, Macmillan accessed at http://help.walmart.com/ Forbes, Thom, “As a Start, Home Was
Publishing Company, 2014. app/answers/detail/a_id/6/~/walmart. Where Walmart’s Digital-Shopping Heart
5
Bhattarai, Abha, “Walmart Was Launching coms-history-and-mission. Is,” Mediapost.com, February 22, 2018,
8
Online Bedding, Cosmetic Brands in Bid https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/ https://www.mediapost.com/publications/
for Upscale Shoppers,” Washington Post, ethics-integrity. article/314974/

tho75109_case15_C162-C170.indd C-170 12/17/18 11:35 AM