Wal-Mart on Becoming the World's Largest Company Essay

Wal-Mart on Becoming the World's Largest Company - Essay Example This was another great idea because store managers were more motivated to succeed and improve their individual stores. Another philosophy Walton had was locating his stores in small towns as opposed to large cities. This allowed him to avoid competition from larger retailers. He also created clusters of stores within a specific region and had giant warehouses built in the middle of these clusters in order to supply the stores in that region (â€Å"Wal-Mart,† 2009). These various strategies and management philosophies that Walton employed made Wal-Mart a tremendous success. Wal-Mart continued to expand in the 80s. Walton introduced â€Å"Sam’s Club† stores in 1983, which allowed customers to buy consumer goods at bulk-quantity prices. In 1987, Wal-Mart purchased a state of the art networking system that instantly communicated inventory and sales information across their network of stores. This greatly increased efficiency and gave Wal-Mart another edge over its co mpetitors. A year later, Wal-Mart introduced their first â€Å"Supercenter† which combined their retail store with a supermarket. They continued to grow in the 90s as they went international in 1995 and introduced the first â€Å"Neighborhood Market† stores, which specialize in groceries, in 1998 (â€Å"Wal-Mart,† 2009).