The merchandise retail industry has a number of segments represented by the following companies:

Company Name Merchandise Concept

Costco Wholesale Membership warehouse

Wal-Mart Discount general merchandise

JC Penney Department store

For a recent year, the following cost of merchandise sold and beginning and ending inventories have been provided from corporate annual reports (in millions) for these three companies:

	Costco	Wal-Mart	JC Penney
Cost of merchandise sold	$67,995	$315,287	$10,799
Merchandise inventory, beginning	5,405	32,713	3,024
Merchandise inventory, ending	5,638	36,318	3,213

a. For this case, use the Internet and your textbook and provide a brief summary of the business strategy and the merchandise concept of each company.

b. Use the data in the table above to calculate the inventory turnover ratio and number of days' sales in inventory for all three companies. Show your work and label all answers appropriately. Round answers to one decimal place.

Compare and interpret the inventory ratios calculated in part b for these three companies based on each company's merchandise concept researched in part a. Include in your paper: