Walmart by Allison Hill

MIS CASE REPORT: Wal-Mart By Allison Hill

1. For Wal-Mart, expanding online is more important now than ever. One can argue that Wal-Mart is doing very well, seeing that they made over 400 billion in sales last year, but this profit was actually due to all the cost-cutting the company did. In 2011 shopping online rose 21% and caused Wal-Mart to take a proactive approach to stepping up their online site. According to Lee Eisenberg the author of "Shoptimism", "While Wal-Mart has had a pretty strong presence online, they haven't fired the imagination of many consumers like Amazon has." Amazon gives customers more than just reviews; it links the cheapest price by working with all types sellers, like the established store Hot Topic, to a private seller from their home. Amazon provides both new and used products and has a research making updates every hour on the cheapest deals. Wal-Mart tried to keep up with this aspect of the site by lowering their prices on some products like the Xbox and books. This started a price war where Amazon would ultimately come out on top, causing Wal-Mart to reevaluate it's online strategy. Currently online sales currently make up less than 5 percent of all retail sales, but analysts expect that to rise up to 15-20 percent over the next decade.

2. Wal-Mart and Best Buy are similar in their online formats and systems. Best buy faces similar problems to Wal-Mart because it is growing online and must compete with the other leading competitors for cheap deals and fast and reliable service or in-store pickup.Their online stores have become so powerful that they have a separate IT section to operate online sales and transactions even if the customer wants to pick the product up in the store, while Wal-Mart is on a similar but slower path. 3. Customers who shop at Wal-Mart are usually lower-income families because of their competitive and affordable prices. Report: Wal-Mart's primary cause of problems is it's rivals. With more then 4,000 stores across the US that focus on Low-cost products and availability, it goes without question that they are one of the largest retailers in the world. "Over a 5 year period Wal-Mart invested over $600 million in Information systems." (Koselka 54) But in the new era of internet shopping, competitors like Amazon, Best Buy, and Target are expanding and improving their online sites so accommodate the population of America who are falling into the trend of purchasing products online. Wal-Mart main issue is that it has been steadily loosing sales due to pricing, poor product choice, and competitors. This is why It is important to corner the internet market before even more people switch to shopping online, because it takes time and effort to build and refine a quality site. Wal-Mart has already devised a plan to help them surpass their online competitors. It is called Wal-Mart To Go and