Wal-Mart Competitive Advantages Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Wal-Mart Competitive Advantages - Case Study Example The researcher states that the discounted retail giant Wal-Mart has many of the competitive advantages that have made the company such a market leader for years now. The rural market strategy that the company has undertaken has clearly helped the company to attain increased market share. The other advantage of Wal-Mart has been the age of its stores. In the year 1990, merely 10% of Wal-Mart stores were more than 8 years old whereas K-Mart, the prime competitor of Wal-Mart had 85% of stores aged above 8 years. The distribution capability is another prominent competitive advantage for Wal-Mart. In their distribution system, they have cross-docking, inside out location strategy which is very much helpful to grow their business in overseas. This is one of the cost saving methods and they can easily reach their customer satisfaction level. The workforce culture of Wal-Mart is a customer-oriented strategy which is motivated by monetary contribution as well as belief in the Wal-Mart culture . This tends to move faster in response and flexibility to the changing demand. Strong corporate culture is very much needed to apply this strategy. Wal-Mart pursued to search for technological competitive improvements. Recently, Wal-Mart set up an electronic data exchange with more than 3,600 retailers with the purpose of receiving orders as well as to interact electronically. The plan has been extended with the purpose of developing, forecasting, shipping, and planning. Even though information costs are larger than competitors but the benefits of inventory cost reduction and also increased sales, compensate the cost appreciably as well as serve Wal-Mart with important competitive advantage. The distribution system of Wal-Mart is enormous and too tough to be replicated by the competitors when anybody considers the electronic connection of sales as well as inventory information across the world.