Wal-Mart is a retail chain company headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. Wal-Mart is the world's leading retailer. See Retail.

Wal-Mart's business includes Wal-Mart discount stores, Wal-Mart shopping malls, Bard discount city stores and Sam member stores. Wal-Mart discount store is a special department store, selling all kinds of furniture and electrical appliances, clothing, electronic products, sporting goods, hardware, gardening supplies, automobile supplies, medicines and food. Wal-Mart Shopping Plaza combines Wal-Mart discount stores and full-service supermarkets. Bard's discount city store is also a department store, offering about 75% of Wal-Mart's similar products. The remaining 25% of Bader's products include manufacturers' cleared goods, discontinued goods, overstocked goods and refurbished goods, all of which are sold at large discounts. Sam member stores combine warehouse facilities and retail stores that store a large number of goods. Customers buy the membership of Sam member store, where they can buy bigger and more expensive appliances and commodities than Wal-Mart.

1945 sam walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, became the franchise manager of Ben Franklin Department Store in Newport, Arkansas. Later, he moved to Bentonville, Arkansas, and opened another Ben Franklin chain store at 1950, which he called Walton 5 &10. He was managed by 1962 15 Walton 5 &10. That year, Sam and his brother James "Bud" Walton opened their own store, Wal-Mart Discount City, in Rogers, Arkansas, because they could not convince Ben Franklin Company to open a chain store with discounts on all goods at any time. In 1969, it operated 18 Wal-Mart discount city stores (now referred to as Wal-Mart for short) and also managed 15 Ben Franklin stores. sam walton registered the company as Wal-Mart Store Co., Ltd. In 1970, the company sold its first shares to the public and opened its first distribution center and home office in Bentonville. 19 72 is listed on the new york stock exchange. By operating its own warehouse, Wal-Mart can buy goods in large quantities, thus reducing costs. In addition, the company set up a store near its warehouse, and established an automated and computerized inventory and distribution system to replenish its stores more quickly.

From the beginning, the guiding ideology of sam walton Store is to provide all kinds of goods to consumers at discounted prices. The company saves money by keeping advertising costs low and locating stores in small towns where residents have few retail options. Wal-Mart's success in small towns has attracted criticism that these stores have taken away the business of small merchants in their hometown. However, the company successfully marketed these stores as friendly local enterprises. In the spirit of Wal-Mart, employees often greet shoppers at the store gate. From the early days, Wal-Mart stores have paid great attention to the needs of specific communities, often selling local goods while selling the goods of the whole chain store. In addition, the company awards university scholarships to selected high school graduates, stores hold charitable fund-raising activities, and sponsors various community activities.

Wal-Mart's corporate community spirit began to have an impact on public policies in the 1990s. Wal-Mart decided to completely ban pasted albums in their stores after the recording industry established a parental consultation system to paste music albums with potentially offensive content. The company then successfully influenced many record companies to release clean versions of pasted albums. Wal-Mart has considerable influence in the music industry, mainly because about one-tenth of all CDs sold in the United States are sold in Wal-Mart. On 1996, the company cooperated with the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United States to prevent the mass sale of over-the-counter drugs used to make methamphetamine, a more dangerous and mood-changing drug. Although many Americans appreciate Wal-Mart's firm stance on these issues, some people criticize it and think that it is not the responsibility of enterprises to enforce morality.

1983, Wal-Mart launched the discount membership warehouse store of Sam Wholesale Club (later called Sam Club). 1987, the company established a joint venture Hypermart*USA stores with Cullum Companies, a supermarket chain in Dallas, Texas. Supermarkets combine groceries and general merchandise with restaurants, banks, video rental shops and other businesses, all in the same building. On 1988, the company changed its name to Wal-Mart. In the businesses run by supermarkets, McDonald's and Taco Bell restaurants, and blockbuster video stores. Also on 1988, sam walton stepped down as CEO of Wal-Mart. He was succeeded by David Glass, who was the man behind the company's extremely profitable inventory system automation in the1970s and1980s. 1990 the company opened its first store in Franklin, Tennessee. 1992, sam walton died of bone cancer.

Wal-Mart continues to expand on 1990. 1990, it bought Maclean, a grocery distributor, for $274 million. The acquisition added more than 50 distribution centers to the company. A year later, it bought the wholesale club for1620,000 USD, and merged its 28 warehouse stores into the Sam member store network. In 1993, the company added 99 Pace member ship warehouses purchased from competitor Kmart to its Sam branch. Wal-Mart also expanded to other countries in the 1990s, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia and China. In 199 1, the company signed a joint venture agreement with CIFRA, a leading Mexican retailer, thus opening many Wal-Mart and Sam member stores in Mexico. 1994, the company purchased 122 Woolco department stores in Canada A and transformed them into Wal-Mart stores. 1At the beginning of 997, Wal-Mart's stock was added to the famous Dow Jones Industrial Average (see Dow Jones Average), which is the primary indicator of the performance of the American stock market.

For the income, profit and other information of Wal-Mart, please refer to the table in this article.