SUMMARY:
Sam Walton opened his first store in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. Since then Wal-Mart has become the largest retailer in the United States, with over 4,100 facilities in the United States and more than 3,100 additional facilities in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom.
Wal-Mart also employs more than 2 million associates worldwide, including more than 1.4 million in the United States
(Corporate Fact Sheet, 2008, www.walmartstores.com). In doing so many other businesses were forced to close and/or file for bankruptcy. However, becoming the largest company hasn’t always been an easy task for Wal-Mart; it has tried many different strategies in many of the different areas in the company. Presently, the still cannot stop finding new ways to change, to grow, to be ground-breaking.
Wal-Mart has prevailed over rough times by using many different plans and whether or not the market agrees with the way they may have approached things or taken care of business, we all must agree that their Strategic Management is outstanding. Through the years they have successfully restructured their business always changing and growing.
Nevertheless, Wal-Mart has always made the consumer feel as if they are first. Fortune 500 has it ranked at number one in their Fortune 500 ranking of America’s largest corporations. In an article written by to Suzanne Kapner, Fortune writer, Wal-Mart's sales thus far are $374.5 billion, with sales growth at 4.4%.
This was confirmed by H. Lee Scott, President and CEO of Wal-Mart who had this to add for this present fiscal year, “fiscal ...