Which company in your industry are most global? What has been the key to their success in other countries?

I found a list of the “Global Powers of Retailing”. This list includes the major global companies that are leading the retail industry in each of their 32 countries. The list ranks companies globally according to their overall revenue. Wal-Mart is ranked #1 top global retail company in the world and in the US. Wal-Mart’s 2010 retail sales were $ 303,935 billion. It had sales per store of 72,400,000 in 2010 with about 4, 198 stores. Today, Wal-Mart has about 6,000 outlets, which proves that they are still expanding.

They are also expanding in the grocery department as well as Target and other large-format value stores. For example, Wal-Mart has created a “Wal-Mart Express” which provides fresh “foods, dry grocery, consumables, health and beauty aids, over-the-counter medicines and in some stores pharmacy counters”. They are attracting all of the different consumers because these stores will be located in small rural communities, as well as in urban neighborhoods. All successful retailers are identified by their selling proposition. The key to Wal-Mart success in the US and in other countries is their price uniqueness. In bad economic times, people are looking for low prices and good quality products. That’s why during the bad economic times Wal-Mart still increases its sales: “Customers stocked up on low-priced merchandise and Wal-Mart quadrupled its same-store-sales gains over May 2007.”

Wal-Mart’s worldwide success is due to its discount store set up. In 2010, Wal-Mart’s worldwide sales generated $ 421, 886 billion. They also had an increase in sales of 1.3 %. These are due to their low price stores during bad economic times, which attract many consumers.

Links:

http://www.stores.org/2011/Top-100-Retailers

http://retailindustry.about.com/od/retailbestpractices/a/retailindustry_article1.htm

http://retailindustry.about.com/od/famousretailers/a/retailercountry.htm