IsnÆt the biggest news in any Small Town, U.S.A., ôDid ya hear theyÆre openinÆ a new Wal-Mart in town?ö Yes! As of 2004, Wal-Mart operated 1,478 Discount Stores, 1,471 Supercenters, 538 SAM'S CLUBs and 64 Neighborhood Markets in the United States alone (Reuters, 2004). In fact, by 2002, excluding the automobile sales industry, Wal-Mart revenues accounted for a full 15% of the entire U.S. retail market alone (Yoffie & Wang, 2002). Having clearly commanded control over the majority market share of the discount retail AND grocery store segments, Wal-Mart needed to internationalize in order to continue feeding its staggering growth (Rowell, 2003).
After overcoming a few difficulties, Wal-Mart has managed to also produce a significance presence in the Americas, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe (Yoffie & Wang, 2002). Due to significant cultural, regulatory, and legal issues, expansions into Asian markets, however, have proven more difficult to penetrate.
While the expansion into Asia has been less successful than Wal-Mart had undoubtedly hoped, there are several potential solutions that would still render its endeavor a success. One solution is to apply its graduated market share approach across all of Asia as it has done in the Japanese market. A second solution is to move toward marketing more non-food product categories, as they have done in Europe. And a third solution would be to apply one of the bigger strategic goals of the company (Yoffie & Wang, 2002), which is to implement a greater e-commerce presence in the Asian markets. By evaluating the Risks and Opportunities of each possible solution, where the Opportunities counter the Risks specifically and where the Opportunities have proven successful in other areaÆs of Wal-MartÆs corporate history, a strategy may emerge that would likely overcome the problems Wal-Mart has faced in establishing a more complete global presence.
The first potential solutio...