Walmart

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., doing business as Walmart /ˈwɔːlmɑːrt/, is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores and grocery stores. Headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, the company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 and incorporated on October 31, 1969. As of December 31, 2015, Walmart has over 11,000 stores in 27 countries, under a total of 72 banners. The company operates under the Walmart name in the United States and Canada. It operates as Walmart de México y Centroamérica in Mexico, as Asda in the United Kingdom, as Seiyu in Japan, and as Best Price in India. It has wholly owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, and Canada. It also owns and operates the Sam's Club retail warehouses.

Walmart is the world's largest company by revenue, according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2014, as well as the biggest private employer in the world with 2.2 million employees. Walmart is a family-owned business, as the company is controlled by the Walton family. Sam Walton's heirs own over 50 percent of Walmart through their holding company, Walton Enterprises, and through their individual holdings. It is also one of the world's most valuable companies by market value, and is also the largest grocery retailer in the U.S. In 2015, it generated 59.8 percent of its US$288 billion sales in the U.S. from its grocery business.

Walmarting

Walmarting is a neologism referring to U.S. discount department store Walmart with three meanings. The first use is similar to the concept of globalization and is used pejoratively by critics and neutrally by businesses seeking to emulate Wal-Mart's success. The second, pejorative, use refers to the homogenization of the retail sector because of those practices. The third, neutral use refers to the act of actually shopping at Wal-Mart.

Background

The term "Walmarting" derives from debate over Walmart's business practices, which effectively apply optimization concepts from logistics, purchasing and finance to achieve and maintain low prices.. More generally, "Walmarting" refers to the spread of Wal-Mart's business model to other big-box retailers throughout the American economy, and the national or global implications of that proliferation.

The Wal-Mart business model includes: marketing to a broad "family" demographic that includes rural as well as urban, ethnic minorities as well as mainstream, people without a higher-level education, lower- or working-class consumers, as well as the middle-class; one-stop shopping based on a very large selection of goods and services; the use of intense price-competition and high-technology inventory management to stimulate and satisfy end-user demand; extreme economies of scale based on big-box delivery of consumables; aggressive supply-chain management that requires producers to reduce their costs significantly to find an outlet for their goods; employment of store workers for low wages, few benefits, and little job security to reduce overhead.

Walmart Canada

Walmart Canada Corp. is the Canadian division of Walmart which is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. It was founded on March 17, 1994 with the purchase of the Woolco Canada chain from the F. W. Woolworth Company.

Originally consisting of discount stores, Walmart Canada's contemporaries include Zellers (before most of its leases were taken over by Target Corporation) and then Target Canada from 2013–2015, Hart Stores, and Giant Tiger. It also competes in many areas with Canadian Tire and Sears Canada. Walmart Canada's six Sam's Club stores (2006-2009, only in Ontario) competed with warehouse club Costco and hypermarket Real Canadian Superstore. Based on the success of the US format, Walmart Canada has focused on expanding Supercentres from new or converted locations, offering groceries which puts them in the same market as supermarket chains such as Loblaws, Real Canadian Superstore, Metro, Sobeys, Thrifty Foods, Safeway, Save-On-Foods, Country Grocer, Fairway Markets, Quality Foods, Co-op and others.