With $401.2 billion revenues, the retailing giant, Wal-Mart, has been ranked as the 2nd place of 2009 Fortune 500 companies. This company is seen as the most successful business in the world today but also viewed as the vital indicator to observe the status of financial crisis recovery. Wal-Mart has won market share during the recession by offering customers lower prices as its successful marketing strategy. Moreover, Wal-Mart is long for expanding its kingdom all over the world. In 2005, Taiwan once was one of Wal-mart’s plans to join the overseas expansion, nevertheless, Wal-mart veered round to China at the last minute.
Instead, the Costco (24th place of 2009 Fortune 500) with 71.4 billion revenues completed Wal-Mart’s work and entered the hyper market of U.S. The differences between Wal-Mart and Costco provide an interesting study in contrast going today. Moreover, the key elements of success of those two retailing giants are also will be the highly concerned for retailing filed.
I. Brief introduction of Wal-Mart & Costco.
A. To compare the different business style & Market size between Wal-Mart & Costco.
“Save Money, Live Better!” is the slogan of Wal-Mart, it was established in 1962 and it grew by brisk spreading in nations then became the world’s largest corporation and the nation’s leading retailer rapidly. In U.S. retailing industry, with the most market share, Wal-mart is the leading giant and its low price strategy forcing their competitors to charge low price as well. According to one academic study, with two-thirds of Wal-mart stores in rural areas, when Wal-mart enters a market, prices drop by 8 percent in rural areas. This figure shows that Wal-mart took the most market share through diminishes price.
Costco was founded in 1976 as a small business in San Diego. In 1983, Costco started its warehouse club industry in Seattle. Since then, Costco spent less than 6 years to become the first company ever to grow from zero to