Wal-Mart
Industrial Analysis:
Wal-Mart competes primarily in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry.
It started out operating mainly as a discount retail department store offering a wide
variety of non-grocery items. However, their focus has turned more toward their
Supercenters which have the same as mentioned above but also includes a full line of
grocery products.
Some of Wal-Mart's main competitors in the discount arena are K-mart and
Target. Since the introduction of the Supercenter and the Neighborhood Market it has
gone up against grocery chains like Albertsons and Kroger. Sam's Club (a membership
only) warehouse which is owned and operated by Wal-Mart competes mostly with
Costco.
Five Forces Framework:
The Threat of New Entrants is probably not much of a concern for the world's
largest retail chain only because they do have Economies of scale by keeping the cost of
products per unit down because they buy in such mass volumes. Wal-Mart has very good
product differentiation with some very large name brands. Access to distribution
channels is a thing of the past since a large number of the suppliers have warehouses
based in the same city as Wal-Mart's distribution center.
The bargaining power of buyers; in this case Wal-Mart being the buyers, the
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