Question
To enter Germany, Walmart acquired a 21-store chain and 74 hypermarkets from a German retailer. Walmart attempted to implement its U.S. personnel policies and procedures:
To enter Germany, Walmart acquired a 21-store chain and 74 hypermarkets from a German retailer. Walmart attempted to implement its U.S. personnel policies and procedures: the Walmart cheer, a door greeter, every associate within 10 feet of a customer smiling and offering help, bagging groceries at the checkout etc. German employees, however, simply refused to accept these policies. There were no door greeters in the German stores, the front line employees behaved as gruffly as they do in other retail outlets in Germany. It also didn't help that the first Walmart boss in Germany was installed from Walmart headquarters in Arkansas. He didn't speak any German and declared English would be the official in-house language. One of the biggest problems Walmart faced in Germany was that, lacking its usual economies of scale and efficient distribution centers, it couldn't get its costs down far enoughto successfully implement its trademark cost-leadership strategy. Higher required wages and restrictive labor laws further drove up the costs. In two paragraphs, first discuss the tension between integration and responsiveness faced by Walmart.Using the Integration/Responsiveness framework, what strategy did Walmart want to implement, and what strategy did they end up with? Second, using the CAGE framework, what are some of the challenges faced by Walmart?Please discuss at least two.
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