Has Wal-Mart reached saturation? What more can they do to expand their business?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

If we go by the words of CEO Lee Scott, Wal-Mart could one day be twice and possibly even three times as big as it
is today. Given his experience and optimism, it would seem unlikely that Wal-Mart has reached anywhere close to
saturation. Even with the conservative 15% annual growth rate per year that it currently has Wal-Mart would be
twice as paid in just five years. Another factor is that more than 50% of Wal-Mart's super centers are in 11 states of
the old South, which leaves plenty of room for expansion in the Northeast and California. They are already doing
several things in these areas to expand their businesses there. Even the political and real estate hurdles in these areas
are being creativity overcome by Wal-Mart by putting in multistory super centers with special escalators, which
could be built on smaller parcels of land. Wal-Mart is also opening mini marts between the areas covered by super
centers. Wal-Mart is opening roughly a store a day in 2003, and these neighborhood markets or ‘small marts’ have
smartly designed food/drug combos, conveniences like self checkout, honor system coffee and pastries, drive-
through pharmacies and half hour film processing to take advantage of smaller markets. Given all these initiatives to
propel growth, it would seem that they would easily achieve their five-year target of being twice the size that they
are today. Could they be three times as large? Historically, they have done almost everything right, and we can
safely assume that in the future they will continue to do things right, and will probably make the right moves to
achieve that seemingly impossible target as well.