Marketing Strategy of Wal-Mart
This is a case analysis of Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in Mexico and North America. Wal-Mart controls a large portion of the markets in which its products are sold, enabling Wal-Mart to maintain its core value of delivering low prices through eliminating the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, developing innovative technology to maintain competitive advantage, and thus creating incredibly high barriers for new entrants.
Wal-Mart’s core value - delivering low prices - has proved successful in creating the largest and most powerful company in history. From 2001-2006, Wal-Mart opened an average of sixteen new supercenters per month, one every business day in 2005 (Fishman, 2006). Ghemawat (2004, cited by Lichtenstein, (2006)) estimated that Wal-Mart’s sales will top one trillion dollars per year within a decade.

Academic research journals were used extensively to collect data. The report intends to flow through various tactics applied by Wal-Mart to gain a better comprehension of its business model (Casadesus-Masanell and Ricart, 2010). Tactics will be analyzed with reference to the importance of Porter’s five forces on Wal-Mart’s strategic positions.
Wal-Mart’s success has allowed the company to gain control of at least 30% of the entire market in many categories of products it sells, causing suppliers to have no bargaining power. Wal-Mart squeezes its suppliers to deliver merchandise at the lowest possible price by threatening to take away their business. For example, Wal-Mart is bigger than Proctor and Gamble’s next nine customers combined. “Wal-Mart’s suppliers can’t consider themselves serious players ... unless they are doing business with Wal-Mart. Once they are doing business with Wal-Mart, though, they are doing business on Wal-Mart’s terms because the company already dominates whatever business their suppliers are in” (Fishman, 2006, p. 20). This reverse control of the bargaining power of suppliers is crucial to Wal-Mart’s strategy of low
Wal-Mart’s core value - delivering low prices - has proved successful in creating the largest and most powerful company in history. From 2001-2006, Wal-Mart opened an average of sixteen new supercenters per month, one every business day in 2005 (Fishman, 2006). Ghemawat (2004, cited by Lichtenstein, (2006)) estimated that Wal-Mart’s sales will top one trillion dollars per year within a decade.

Academic research journals were used extensively to collect data. The report intends to flow through various tactics applied by Wal-Mart to gain a better comprehension of its business model (Casadesus-Masanell and Ricart, 2010). Tactics will be analyzed with reference to the importance of Porter’s five forces on Wal-Mart’s strategic positions.
Wal-Mart’s success has allowed the company to gain control of at least 30% of the entire market in many categories of products it sells, causing suppliers to have no bargaining power. Wal-Mart squeezes its suppliers to deliver merchandise at the lowest possible price by threatening to take away their business. For example, Wal-Mart is bigger than Proctor and Gamble’s next nine customers combined. “Wal-Mart’s suppliers can’t consider themselves serious players ... unless they are doing business with Wal-Mart. Once they are doing business with Wal-Mart, though, they are doing business on Wal-Mart’s terms because the company already dominates whatever business their suppliers are in” (Fishman, 2006, p. 20). This reverse control of the bargaining power of suppliers is crucial to Wal-Mart’s strategy of low