Wal-Mart analysis Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Wal-Mart analysis - Research Paper Example The paper describes the Wal-Mart company in general. This company is also the largest grocery retailer in United States and deals with diverse ranges of product lines. Wal-Mart mainly operates in 17 different countries. It is identified that both US and UK follow a free market approach that does not impose any regulation on business expansion. According to this concept, the government has only a distant role in market regulation. In contrast, China has adopted a more restrictive approach so as to preserve the interests of its traditional traders. Although, China possesses world’s largest potential market, the strict market regulations adversely affect Wal-Mart’s business interests. As compared to Chinese market, Indian market covers the features of both capitalism and a socialistic market economy. This mixed market system provides equal power to industrialists and government over the market. Like in the case of US and UK, Japan maintains a free market system so as to en courage national as well as international traders. Japan’s industrialized economy is the third largest in the world. According to Daniels, Radebaugh, Sullivan, and Salwan, different nations follow different market systems and regulations. This varied market structures raise many challenges to Wal-Mart Stores because the organization is forced to restructure its marketing policies in accordance with the trade laws of the nations in which it operates. The sources of political risk for the countries in which the Wal-Mart has its presence vary. For instance, the organization operates in Pakistan where political conflicts and terrorism are at its peak. Such a political atmosphere is not beneficial for a multinational company like Wal-Mart because the political instability would seriously impinge on the firm’s marketing operations. Similarly, China is a communist country that strongly opposes capitalistic ideologies. Under this situation, the Wal-Mart cannot function effecti vely in China since the communist perceptions of Chinese government does not fit with the capitalistic interests of the organization. In this way, the Wal-Mart may face different political threats from its various foreign markets. Therefore, it is recommendable for the company to select foreign market segments carefully while dealing with international expansion. The above said political constraints prevent the organization from developing its product lines and business strategies in the target country. 4. Many groups of individuals possess shares in Wal-Mart and these stakeholders can be mainly categorized under two heads such as market and non-market stakeholders. A market stakeholder has an economic stake in what the company does; whereas a non-market stakeholder possesses a political stake. It is obvious that market stakeholders always aim at their economic benefits. Since both these groups contribute to the operational requirements of the company, Wal-Mart’s stakeholders must get benefits that are adequate to cover the risk elements they have taken. In the view of Brigham and Ehrhardt (2011, p.572), since investment opportunities and earnings of an international company vary from year to year, it will have to make great efforts to maintain stable dividend distribution. Hence, the shareholder satisfaction is a

Rader, Cossman & Porter (2012) Fear of crime and vulnerability Essay

Rader, Cossman & Porter (2012) Fear of crime and vulnerability - Essay Example Such physical vulnerabilities include gender, health, and age, while social vulnerabilities are the social economic status of such people and their race. The research held that both the physical and social vulnerabilities characteristics are interdependent causes of fear among people. The direct effects of such social vulnerabilities are tied to physical indicators of vulnerability, though occurrence of indirect effects of physical vulnerabilities are tied to fear of victimization through some indicators of social vulnerabilities. Nahavanna (2006) explains ethical considerations as an important aspect in any quantitative research design, which includes respecting the rights of the participants, and the individual consent by the respondents. The benefits of participation as addressed by the authors would be to learn how people from different races, gender, and age distribution would react to fear of crime, leading to an informed basis on which nursing psychology has to be applied whil e dealing with such vulnerable groups. Since the authors used data sets prepared from a previous research, risk benefits, and informed consent were not of much significance in this research. The board approval was obtained. In this case, the Panel Study on American Religion and Ethnicity (PS-ARE), who carried out the primary survey, authorized the use of the survey results to analyze data collected on statistics that would best describe the trend of both physical and social vulnerabilities in fear of crimes. Therefore, the researchers did not require any consent from the respondents, but required authority of the primary body that handled the research. Since the primary survey was carried out by a religious body alongside additional data from US Census Bureau, it would be expected that respondents participated in the research willingly. In this research, the dependent variable was well identified as the proxy for fear of crime, which is reflective of the level of safety the individu als felt in their respective neighborhoods. On the other hand, the independent variables were indicated as the social and physical vulnerabilities of such groups in their neighborhood. Data collection in this research was from analysis of the survey indicated above. The responses were classified into five distinct categories, depending on answers from respondents to the question whether they felt unsafe in their neighborhoods. â€Å"Never† was associated with 1, while â€Å"at least once a day† was rated 5. On the other hand, in physical vulnerabilities, gender (female = 1), while fair or poor health was designated by 1. Other classifying categories included level of education, and income, which were recorded in 19 categories ranging from $200,000, and marital status as married or cohabiting indicated by 1, else =0. The rationale behind this classification was to define the respondents into refined groups as precisely as possible. Therefore, the respondents’ cha racteristics were the social and physical vulnerability. The time taken for the actual survey was not recorded, nor was the time taken to analyze the survey and classify the data in this research. From the primary survey, data collection involved classifying areas into a three digit zip code, and then for each three digit area, another set of two five digit zip codes were randomly formed, leading to about 90 addresses, which were selected randomly and households screened for eligibility. Therefore, in this research, the data collected from the above defined primary research was analyzed for the physical and social vulnerability factors, and the data analyzed quantitatively. Data management