Capstone
Wal-Mart

Introduction Wal-Mart Corporation is one of the largest retail stores in the world. They serve customers in meeting their needs with low cost saving items. On October 31, 1962, Wal-Mart was founded and incorporated by Sam Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas. Mr. Walton went into business because he felt that items sold were too high for the average customer to afford. His focus was to sell products at low prices to get higher volume sales at a lower profit margin. He bought bulk products from different suppliers so he could incorporate savings into his pricing to lower cost for customers. Under the savings cost concept, Wal-Mart grew rapidly and surpassed its competitors in sales and generating profits. …show more content…

Focusing on meeting these core objectives has led to the overall success of Wal-Mart. Similar to most big corporations, Wal-Mart has three primary categories of stakeholder called Capital, Product and Organizational stakeholders. All stakeholders are considered important to Wal-Mart because they contribute together to the overall success of Wal-Mart. Although all stakeholders are important to Wal-Mart, capital is place on the top priority list of importance. Satisfying the capital market stakeholders is top priority because Wal-Mart cannot adequately function nor survive without their monetary support. They consist of shareholders and major suppliers of the capital (i.e. banks, lenders ect.), which Wal-Mart uses to operate its operations. Without their investment, it will be difficult for Wal-Mart to meet demands and it may cause them to fail and go out of business. These shareholders are influential in determining the way the capital structure will align for Wal-Mart in the future (Hit, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2013, p. 20). Suppliers and customers are both known as product market stakeholders (Hit, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2013, p. 21). Wal-Mart deems product market stakeholders as equally important as the capital market stakeholders. They believe the customer is the most important stakeholder and striving to meet their satisfaction is why they exist. In the eyes of Wal-Mart, without customers they will not have a