WALMART IN THE 21st CENTURY:

In 2000, David Glass exited from the position of CEO and Lee Scott was named the new president and CEO of Walmart. Right at the start of the new century, Walmart ranked fifth by?Fortune magazine?on its Global Most Admired All-Stars list.

Experimentation:

In late 2005, Walmart designed two experimental stores in?McKinney, Texas,?and Aurora, Colorado respectively. These stores featured different implementations of technologies such as photovoltaic solar panels, biofuel-capable boilers, wind turbines, and water-cooled refrigerators.

In March 2006, Walmart opened a new supercenter in?Plano, Texas and the new store featured wooden floors, wider aisles, a?sushi?bar, a coffee/sandwich shop, fast-food joints, microbrew?beer, expensive?wines, and high-end electronics. This store also skipped the usually blue colour for its signboards and instead went with a hunter-green background behind the Walmart letters.

Increasing Competition:

The shift to online space for conducting?businesses?has led to the decline of physical retail. Even what’s remaining is being reduced due to cut-throat competition from a few funded by the aforementioned?e-commerce?sites. The rise of organic food?supermarkets, such as?Whole Foods?and?Wild Oats, posed a great threat towards Walmart’s profits since Walmart considers itself to be one of the largest grocery chains in the United States. With the increasing competition, Walmart announced in May 2006 that it was increasing the amount of?organic food?available in its stores.

Competing Online:

The world has, for the most part, moved away from physical retail to?online stores. Amazon is the first thing that pops up when we talk about online retail for the masses in most parts of the world. This makes Amazon a major competitor of Walmart. This led Walmart to shift its focus towards the online sectors and it launched its own e-commerce store Walmart.com in 2007.

It was also during 2007 that Walmart changed its slogan from “Always Low Prices, Always.” to “Save money. Live better.”

The spark symbol was meant to represent the spark of innovation that led Sam Walton to start the first Walmart store. The spark was also to represent Walmart’s associates (employees). In May 2009, Walmart entered the Indian market by partnering with Bharti.

In June 2011, Walmart entered the African continent upon acquiring 51% of Massmart Holdings. This acquisition gave the company access to – South Africa,?Botswana,?Ghana,?Lesotho,?Malawi,?Mauritius,?Mozambique,?Namibia,?Nigeria,?Swaziland,?Tanzania,?Uganda,?and?Zambia.

Recent Times:

In 2016, Walmart rolled out Walmart Pay a digital-based payment tool for customers to pay for purchases with their smartphones.

In 2017, Walmart introduced free two-day shipping on its e-commerce platform to compete with Amazon and eBay among other online retail platforms.

In?2018, the company changed its name from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. to Walmart, Inc.

Walmart earns an average profit of around the US $1.8 Mn per hour and Walmart is much bigger than re-known retail chains including Home Depot, Kroger, Target, Sears, Costco, and K-Mart collectively in terms of?revenue. All of this started from one man’s hope and determination that even a grocery store would work out if they catered to the right audience.