CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

01   Is Walmart the best-positioned retailer on the globe?

02   Rise of consumerism

Arrival of the boom times

03   House of (Walmart) brands

Shifting away from national brands

Great values

The globalization of private label

The brands behind the private labels

04   Don’t aggravate the customer

I can’t believe it’s not on shelves

We didn’t add back 3,000… no it was more like 9,000

SKU rationalization: far from perfection but a vital process

Doing more with less

Outsmarting the elephant

05   It’s an EDLP world

The consumer advocate and king of deflation

Recession lesson #1: never take your eye off the customer

The path to efficiency

How Walmart broke the supermarket pricing model

Too concerned with trading down over trading out

No need for weapons of mass distraction

Preço Baixo Todo Dia: is it an EDLP world?

EDLP doesn’t exist without EDLC

Kakaku Yasuku – EDLP implementation isn’t always seamless

Walmart versus inflation

06   Walmart and its suppliers

Walmart and its suppliers: the evolution of collaboration

Canoeing with P&G

Dinner with General Electric

Collaboration takes hold

Is collaboration on the wane?

‘Tough but fair negotiations’

The dependence of US suppliers on Walmart

Pharmaceuticals and alcohol have a convoluted route to the shopper

Tobacco & confectionery – the McLane clause

Lack of disclosure from private and international businesses

Reliance on Walmart as high as 55 per cent

P&G leading the way

The power is now with Walmart

Walmart’s shopper-centricity driving customer-centricity from suppliers

Is Walmart lacking insight?

As Walmart evolves, suppliers must follow suit

Structural alignment is key

Assortment editing and the impact on suppliers

Vendors and sustainability

07   Removing the margin-takers

The evolution of global sourcing at Walmart

New global sourcing strategy unveiled in 2010

Does global buying really exist?

Grocery is still a national business

Walmart’s quest for leverage

Global Brands Imports gaining traction

GMCs yielding results

08   Still leading in logistics

The scale of Walmart’s logistics system

In-house supply chain development

Food for thought

Supplier collaboration

Globalizing supply chain excellence

Globalizing one country at a time

Greening the supply chain

Implications for suppliers

09   The surest way to predict the future is to invent it

Technology takes hold in the 1970s

The 1980s: technology acceleration in-store

Opening the inner sanctum: Walmart’s use of third-party IT suppliers

Data warehousing: helping Walmart drink from a hosepipe of information

Retail Link: a new era for Walmart and its suppliers

The false dawn of RFID

The globalization of technology in Walmart

Technology and private label development

Price optimization

Bean counting and number-crunching

In-store technology

‘Our computer really does give us the power of competitive advantage’

10   Facing up to a multi-channel future

From Little Rock to Big Apple

The Supercenter and Walmart’s rise to grocery domination

The final frontier: getting bigger by going small

The icing on the cake

The British are coming

Grandma, the Manhattanite and fraternity boys

The kings of convenience: US drugstores

Living off Walmart’s crumbs

Digital evolution

Democratization of technology

Amazon – ‘the Walmart of our era’

Going global.com

11   Going global: Walmart’s international retail leadership

Walmart International’s market entry strategies

By the numbers

Walmart International in context

Walmart International performance

The scope and scale of Walmart International

Channel strategy

Small-box development

Walmart International: the good, the bad and the ugly

Where next?

12   Tomorrow’s Walmart

Appendix

Further reading

Index