International Purchasing and Supply-Chain Management Essay

International Purchasing and Supply-Chain Management - Essay Example Furthermore, the work at hand presents some remarkable concepts and models pertaining to purchasing and supply-chain management. It was found that none of these models could actually explain in detail the prevailing business model that Wal-Mart employed. However, Porter’s value-chain model and Reck and Long model were found to have closer resemblance to Wal-Mart’s employed model at present. However, there is a substantial reason to believe that Wal-Mart considers purchasing and supply-chain management as integral components of a general marketing activity, rather than separate entities as Porter suggested in his value-chain model. Keywords: Wal-Mart, purchasing, supply-chain management, value chain Table of Contents Executive Summary 1 Introduction 3 What Wal-Mart is doing? 4 What the concepts and models are saying? 9 Evaluation of Wal-Mart’s approach 13 Conclusion 15 References 16 Introduction Every firm has its own story to tell, including its humble inception, its ups and downs along the way, and finally the relevant moves it might have put into consideration in order to reach the highest point where it might have successfully situated itself at present. There are many firms that finally reached this point. Among them is Wal-Mart, a firm that is more than just a name, but it speaks of value for customers, that is why it is one of the most recognised retail brands and companies in the world for consumer goods. The firm is widely recognised as the retailing giant with major operations across 28 countries under 60 different banners. It was able to branch out overseas, extending its competitive advantage way beyond the bound of the competitive market in the United States. Wal-Mart is a retailer of consumer goods that Sam Walton founded in 1962. Its ultimate strategy is to offer products with low costs. Its low-cost strategy is the leading source of its competitive advantage, but behind this, its purchasing and supply-chain management have gr eat contribution too, which have become the common primary interest among various business experts in the academe and in the actual business world. The firm is able to maintain its reputation in the retailing industry by counting on its purchasing and supply-chain management. Here where the firm is able to generate great volume, a continuing growth of its large scale and eventually lower cost for its product offerings. The firm is able to establish efficient and advanced inventory management system, and little and not so costly promotion and advertising efforts. Concerning this, it is of great interest to know whether the prevailing concepts and models about the purchasing and supply-chain management reflect on the condition of Wal-Mart at present. Regarding this point, the work at hand tries to critically evaluate the Wal-Mart approach to purchasing and supply-chain management against models and concepts explored in the class. There are many important points to be discussed regardi ng the above objective, but it is important to consider first the things that Wal-Mart is doing in the industry, primarily in the context of purchasing and su