Walmart's competetive advantage

Wal-Mart is one of the, if not most successful retail stores in the world. Wal-Mart is able to hold a competitive advantage over other retail stores because of how effective they are at managing the massive company. The company is actually so big now that they basically dictate at what price the suppliers are going to sell them products at. Wal-Mart is always looking for ways to cut costs to keep improving their advantage over their competitors, something that maybe RIM should have though of when they were leading in the Mobile industry. The strategy that Wal-Mart uses in order to keep their competitive advantage is outlined by the following:

1. Low Cost - Wal-Mart is able to sell their products for very low prices, because of how good they are at lowering their operating expenses. The major way that they cut costs is virtually because of how good their distribution capability is, which includes their store locations. Competitors can't keep up with how low Wal-Mart is able to sell their products at giving them a huge advantage on where people go to shop.

2. Service - Wal-Mart puts the customers needs first. They use the mindset that the worst thing a customer can do is spend money at another store and that customers don't need you, you need customers. As a result they will do anything in order to get more customers, this includes having great customer service to influence repeat business, allowing customers to virtually return any product that they bought (excluding food) as well as having low prices. Having a workforce culture that is very customer-oriented greatly helps increase the loyalty from customers and as I mentioned before it helps bring back customers to the store.

3. Leadership - Wal-Mart was able to create a culture within their managers to put the company first. Sam Walton was able to inspire leaders to focus on the company instead of their own egos. This is similar to how the Japanese run businesses, by creating a team atmosphere that motivates workers to do a good job so that they won't let the team down. Wal-Mart holds yearly meetings for their managers that are apparently full of spirit and from what I've heard they sound pretty awesome.

Wal-Mart is making sure that they stay on top, and they are doing it the right way. They sell basically anything but they also make sure to focus on the important things like ways that they could reduce operational costs and how they can make Wal-Mart better for the customer.