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Wal-Mart Company

Wal-Mart Company
Introduction and Overview
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. operates retail stores in various formats worldwide. It operates through three segments: Wal-Mart Stores, Sam’s Club, and International. The Wal-Mart Stores segment includes supercenters, discount stores, and neighborhood markets in the United States as well as walmart.com. This segment offers general merchandise, including apparel, domestics, fabrics and notions, stationery and books, shoes, house wares, hardware, electronics, home furnishings, small appliances, automotive accessories, horticulture and accessories, sporting goods, toys, pet food and pet accessories, cellular phones, and cellular service plan contracts. Its stores also offer grocery merchandise, and financial services and products. The Sam’s Club segment includes the warehouse membership clubs in the United States as well as samsclub.com. This segment primarily provides hard goods, soft goods, institutional-size grocery items, and selected private-label items under the MEMBER’S MARK, BAKERS and CHEFS, and SAM’S CLUB brands. The International segment includes various formats of retail stores and restaurants, including discount stores, supercenters, and Sam’s Clubs that operate in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the People’s Republic of China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom. (Online 208)
Wal-Mart was ranked 17 on the 2007 Forbes 2000 list and is known to be the world’s largest retailer. In this I believe that Wal-Mart would be ranked in the top position in the industry and is probably contributing much to the success of such industry.
Since Wal-Mart is the largest retail company that sells a variety of products from small cheap items to large expensive ones, it is probably concerned about theft because some customers might try clothing, for example, and just leave the store wearing those clothes without paying for them. Another concern would...