Submitted by: Ali-Abbas

(NDU-BS-20/S-1705)
Dated: November 11, 2022
Submitted to: Dr. Arslan Rafi
E-commerce

Wal- mart updated 2017 summary:

Founded in 1962 by Sam Walton, Wal-Mart has grown to become the world's largest retailer
with operations in 28 countries and annual revenues of over $485 billion. With its "Everyday
Low Prices" corporate strategy, Walmart leverages its core competencies in price leadership,
economies of scale, purchasing strategy and purchasing power to expand its operations to
11,700 stores worldwide serving 260 million customers per week. It has also established itself
as the second largest online retailer in the United States. Although Walmart enjoys a significant
market share, over the years its revenues have declined, and its growth has been modest.
Furthermore, with the booming e-commerce business, the main threat to Walmart comes from
e-commerce retailers such as Amazon. Its low-price strategy was still valid in early 2017; in the
firm's 2016 annual report, award leadership remained "at the core of who we are." McMillan,
who became CEO in 2014 after nearly 25 years with the company, combined an ongoing focus
on low costs and low prices with a commitment to improving the customer experience. in-store
shopping, experimenting with store formats and locations, investing heavily in Wal-Mart's e-
commerce, and integrating its online platform with its vast brick-and-mortar network. In 2011,
Wal-Mart launched a new format called Walmart Express, which were small stores of 15,000
square feet or less, located in urban areas and designed to compete with convenience stores
and dollar stores.
 As other discount retailers faltered, Target became Wal-Mart's main domestic competitor.
Its fiscal 2017 revenue of $69.5 billion, though less than a quarter of Wal-Mart's U.S. store
sales, firmly established it as the No. 2 discount retailer in the U.S. By the end of 2015, it had
paid nearly $120 million to settle lawsuits. Target tried to accelerate its growth by expanding
into Canada in 2013 by buying the store leases of the struggling Canadian discount chain for
$1.8 billion. Other potential competitors of Wal-Mart are Amazon, e-bay, and Ali baba.
Its 2016 sales of $136 billion were far less than Wal-Mart's, but its growth was impressive:
Amazon's retail sales grew at an annual rate of 19.8 between 2011 and 2015. Amazon didn't
make a profit for most years, but investors loved it. its growth model: over the previous decade,
its share price increased almost 20 times and in July 2015 surpassed the market value of Wal-
Mart16. At the beginning of 2017, its value ($385 billion) was almost twice that of Wal-Mart
($208 billion). By 2017, walmart.com was the second largest online retailer in the US after
Amazon, averaging roughly 85 million unique visits each month. Additionally, like Amazon, its
website provided instant access to digital content such as music and video and included a
Marketplace feature that allowed third parties to sell their goods on walmart.com. Its online
revenue of $14 billion in fiscal 2016 was just one-sixth of Amazon's total revenue. Despite this
impressive growth, the total number fell far short of Amazon, with hundreds of millions of
products offered.18 Wal-Mart also planned to build eight new additional distribution centers in
2016-2017 to handle online orders. To further strengthen its e-commerce platform, the
company has acquired 15 startups since 2011, including online retail startup Jet.com for $3.3
billion in September 2016. The bet would improve its online operations as well as its younger,
wealthier, and more urban customer base. Following the completion of the acquisition, Jet.com
CEO Marc Lore became CEO of Walmart's US e-commerce operations, in a leadership transition
that saw other Jet.com executives take leadership positions in Walmart's e-commerce
operations. Lore remained on Amazon's executive team for two years after the acquisition
before founding Jet.com, which launched in 2015.
Wal-Mart entered the African and Asian markets in 2011 with the $2.4 billion acquisition of
Massmart, which operated 377 stores in a number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including
nearly 300 in its home country of South Africa. Faced with stiff competition from established
retail chains, a tough regulatory environment, powerful unions and unfamiliar cultural
practices, Wal-Mart struggled to find its footing and exited the market in 2006 after suffering
losses of over $1 billion.

The End