What are the different strategies that Wal-Mart followed in order to ensure their dominance?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Wal-Mart followed a number of strategies from its very inception that allowed it to reach the dominance that it has
today. And it started with the philosophy that Sam Walton followed through on Wal-Mart from the very beginning.
He believed in providing value to the customer, sharing information and profit with employees, and concepts such as
flat organization, empowerment and gain sharing long before these were industry accepted terms. He save billions
for his customers. He saw manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers as part of a single customer focused
process rather than as participants in a series of transactions, and he worked to alter the relationships between these
people to allow them to work together, rather than against each other. His philosophy of everyday low prices
allotted to save merchandising and advertising costs, and his huge stores offered economies of scale of a wide choice
of merchandise. But the base of all this lied a set of strategic business decisions that allowed the company to be
transformed into a capabilities based competitor. The locus was on satisfying customer needs and providing them
quality goods and making the goods available when and where customers want them. Wal-Mart’s extremely
efficient logistics system involving cross docking allowed them to keep their cost of sales 3% below industry
average. Another key component of their logistics infrastructure was companies fast and responsive transport
system comprising 24 distribution centers and 2800 company-owned trucks. This fleet of trucks allowed Wal-Mart
to ship the goods from warehouse to a store in less than 48 hours. Wal-Mart had a private satellite communications
system that allowed sharing of information between super centers.