The Harvard Business Review says that Wal-main Mart’s strengths are buying power, supply chain management, and superior logistics. Because Wal-Mart is good at these things, it can sell goods at lower prices than many of its competitors.
In 2014, Wal-Mart was at the top of the Fortune 500 list. Fortune says that Wal-Mart made 473.1 billion dollars in sales during its 2014 fiscal year. How Stuff Works says that one reason why Wal-Mart is so successful is that its supply chain works so well.
Wal-Mart was a big part of how the universal bar code came to be. The company has used the information from this bar code to improve how they keep track of their inventory and make their supply chain run more smoothly. Wal-Mart also has a lot of power when it comes to negotiating prices with its suppliers because it is so big and has so much buying power.
How Stuff Works says that economists don’t agree on whether Wal-Mart helps or hurts the economy. Some economists think that Wal-Mart is good for the economy because it sells goods at lower prices, making them more affordable, and because it puts pressure on other stores to do the same. Other economists say that Wal-Mart hurts the economy by driving competitors out of business and sending jobs overseas to save money.
