The Essential Advantage

CHAPTER SEVEN

UNLOCKING GROWTH

Around 2003, Walmart hit a wall. The retail chain found itself in a difficult position, one that any company that has reached a $250 billion sales mark might expect, but the difficulty was new to this enterprise. Walmart was having trouble increasing its revenues.

There were several reasons for this. For one, far fewer of its preferred customers were left for Walmart to reach in North America, especially given some daunting local challenges (including community protests) when it tried to open new stores. Moving to other parts of the world was also challenging; the chain had successfully entered the United Kingdom through acquisition (of the ASDA supermarket chain), but it failed to get a foothold in Germany or Japan, ...