Wal-Mart Store Inc,

Wal-Mart Store Inc, one of the biggest retailers in the world, has been standing in the world for many years. It was found by Mr. Sam Walton in 1962. After many years of development, it has become the largest private employer in the United States and the world's largest chain of retailers. And its success left gives other retailers many implications. This paper will analysis Wal-mart’s developmental characteristics and the strategies of its success.

Since it established, Wal-Mart has expanded its business to fourteen countries, such as United States, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, China, Japan and so on. In some of these countries like China, Canada, the U.S., Wal-Mart has developed well. However, in other countries like Japan and South Korea, it has been confronted with many dilemmas. Location characteristics like local competition, culture will influence its expansion. In my opinion, Location is an important factor to the success or failure of an enterprise. Wal-Mart, as a chain of retail stores, is not easy to change its place because of its large scale, fixed position, a large amount of capital investment. So it is very important to Wal-Mart chose a suitable place. But different countries have different cultures and local enterprises. For countries like China, Canada, and the UK, they are big countries with more supply. And the retail way provides cheap, and high-qualified goods can easily attract people. To some extent, Wal-Mart provides another choice to people to buy goods. By contrast, countries like South Korea and Japan are more conservative, they are inclined to buy goods in their national enterprises.

Wal-Mart entered different countries with different ways. There are mainly three ways for it to enter into a country. They are acquisition, joint ventures, and greenfield investment. For instance, it entered China, Brazil, and Mexico through joint ventures, entered Japan, the U.K. and Germany through acquisitions. I think the joint