Books about Walmart from Amazon.com

Wal-Mart isn’t just the world’s biggest company, it is probably the world’s most written-about. But no book until this one has managed to penetrate its wall of silence or go beyond the usual polemics to analyze its actual effects on its customers, workers, and suppliers. Drawing on unprecedented interviews with former Wal-Mart executives and a wealth of staggering data (e.g., Americans spend $36 million an hour at Wal-Mart stores, and in 2004 its growth alone was bigger than the total revenue of 469 of the Fortune 500), The Wal-Mart Effect is an intimate look at a business that is dramatically reshaping our lives..
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Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America's heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world.  The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, Sam never lost the common touch.  Here, finally, inimitable words.  Genuinely modest, but always sure if his ambitions and achievements.  Sam shares his thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style.

In a story rich with anecdotes and the "rules of the road" of both Main Street and Wall Street, Sam Walton chronicles the inspiration, heart, and optimism that propelled him to lasso the American Dream..
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Conquering the complexity in products and services can generate larger contributions to profits and growth than nearly any other business strategy

Here's a guarantee: Somewhere in your business, there is too much complexity. You may also be losing out by having too little complexity where it counts - in the products, services and options you offer to customers. Either way, the impact of complexity is enormous in terms of lost profit and missed growth opportunities.

Conquering Complexity in Your Business shows how to break through the ceiling on profits and growth by implementing the three rules for conquering complexity:

• Eliminating complexity that customers will not pay for
• Exploiting the complexity that customers will pay for
• Minimizing the costs of the complexity you offer

You'll find methods and tools you need to:

Identify the offering and process complexity in your business

Quantify the impact of that complexity

Decide which complexity you want to keep and which to eliminate

Select specific approaches to eliminate different kinds of complexity

This knowledge will significantly improve your ability to grow profit, revenue, and shareholder value.

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Price: $2.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Since Sam Walton's death in 1992, Wal-Mart has gone from being the largest retailer in the world to holding the top spot on the Fortune 500 list as the largest company in the world. Don Soderquist, who was senior vice chairman during that time, played a crucial role in that success. Sam Walton said, "I tried for almost twenty years to hire Don Soderquist . . . But when we really needed him later on, he finally joined up and made a great chief operating officer." Responsible for overseeing many of Wal-Mart's key support divisions, including real estate, human resources, information systems, logistics, legal, corporate affairs, and loss prevention, Soderquist stayed true to his Christian values as well as Wal-Mart's distinct management style. "Probably no other Wal-Mart executive since the legendary Sam Walton has come to embody the principles of the company's culture—or to represent them within the industry—as has Don Soderquist," Discount Store News once reported.

In The Wal-Mart Way, Soderquist shares his story of helping lead a global company from being a $43 billion company to one that would eventually exceed $200 billion. Several books have been written about Wal-Mart's success, but none by the ones who were the actual players. It was more than "Everyday Low Prices" and distribution that catapulted the company to the top. The core values based on Judeo-Christian principles—and maintained by leaders such as Soderquist—are the real reason for Wal-Mart's success..
Price: $1.63 [Notify me when price goes down.]

After carving up the once lovingly cared-for downtowns of Small Town America, Wal-Mart launched a frontal assault on mom-and-pop businesses all over the globe. With 1.5 million employees operating more than 3, 500 stores, Wal-Mart is now the world's largest private employer. In this third edition of HOW WAL-MART IS DESTROYING AMERICA (AND THE WORLD), intrepid Texas newspaperman Bill Quinn continues the fight. Featuring detailed accounts of Wal-Mart's questionable business practices and the latest information on Wal-Mart lawsuits, vendor issues, and efforts to stop expansion, Quinn shows why Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., is arguably the most feared and despised corporation in the world. Whether you're a customer fed up with Wal-Mart's false claims, a vendor squeezed by strong-arm tactics, a worker pushed to increase the Waltons' bottom line, or a concerned citizen trying to save your hometown, this book will show you how to get Wal-Mart off your back and out of your backyard..
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Praise for WHAT I LEARNED FROM SAM WALTON

"Michael Bergdahl's book presents unique insights into the staggering international success of Wal-Mart Throughout the pages of this book, you can almost hear Sam Walton himself coaching and inspiring his legion of employees to greatness."
-Tracy Mullin, President and CEO, National Retail Federation

"Retailers, non-retailers, manufacturers, and suppliers will enjoy Bergdahl's insights into Wal-Mart's service culture and its leadership icon, Sam Walton."
-Roger J. Dow, Senior Vice President Global and Field SalesMarriott International, Inc.

Bergdahl outlines his competitive strategy with the acronym P.O.C.K.E.T.S.

P-Price: Don't try to compete on price; differentiate your product selection.

O-Operations: Break the retail "ready, shoot, aim" tactical orientation bydeveloping an actual strategy to compete.

C-Culture: Build a can-do culture with a strong sense of urgency. Communicate your values and beliefs over and over again to your employees.

K-Key Item Promotion/Product: Determine who you are and uniformly communicate your brand message to your entire team.

E-Expenses: Become obsessed about controlling costs.

T-Talent: Recruit constantly and hire people who have both experience and high potential.

S-Service: Never take your customer for granted. Empower your employees to make decisions involving customer concerns..
Price: $8.22 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Wal-Mart is under attack--from labor unions, urban planners, globalization critics, and community activists. The company's detractors argue that Wal-Mart reduces living standards, hurts retail trade, causes unemployment, and relegates Third World workers to poverty. In the Wal-Mart Revolution, Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox examine Wal-Mart's true role in the economy. The authors look briefly at the history of retailing in America and the contributions made by James Penney and Frank Woolworth. Looking specifically at Wal-Mart, they review conditions before and after Wal-Mart entered a local market and look more broadly at Wal-Mart's impact on wages, productivity growth and inflation. Vedder and Cox show that the retailer has been a force for good..
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Going Lean sets aside the notion that efficient operations and powerful inno­vations are only possible when business is steady and demand is growing Instead, companies must learn that sudden shifts or unpredictable conditions need not undermine their results. Led by a new breed of companies -Toyota, Wal-Mart, and Southwest Airlines--a powerful, yet unexpected mindset is reshaping the rules for business competitiveness. By using Lean Dynamics (tm)--based on the now-famous Toyota Production System--companies everywhere can thrive in virtually any environment. In Going Lean, readers will learn how to: become broadly effective in creating and sustaining value * set a critical foundation for achieving sustained excellence * identify sources of lag and create robust value streams that thrive in today's dynamic conditions * describe the underlying techniques to maintain steady and predictable flow * create a system based on "pull," or external demand that consistently introduces new innovation even during severe downturns * strive for perfection * deliver industry-leading returns.
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The largest company in the world by far, Wal-Mart takes in revenues in excess of $280 billion, employs 1.4 million American workers, and controls a large share of the business done by almost every U.S. consumer-product company. More than 138 million shoppers visit one of its 5,300 stores each week. But Wal-Mart’s “everyday low prices” come at a tremendous cost to workers, suppliers, competitors, and consumers.
The Bully of Bentonville exposes the zealous, secretive, small-town mentality that rules Wal-Mart and chronicles its far-reaching consequences. In a gripping, richly textured narrative, Anthony Bianco shows how Wal-Mart has driven down retail wages throughout the country, how their substandard pay and meager health-care policy and anti-union mentality have led to a large scales exploitation of workers, why their aggressive expansion inevitably puts locally owned stores out of business, and how their pricing policies have forced suppliers to outsource work and move thousands of jobs overseas.
Based on interviews with Wal-Mart employees, managers, executives, competitors, suppliers, customers, and community leaders, The Bully of Bentonville brings the truths about Wal-Mart into sharp focus.

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Price: $5.29 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Al Norman, who has been called the "guru of the anti-Wal-Mart movement" by 60 Minutes, has just written a new book calling for a national consumer boycott of the giant retailer.

The timing couldn't be better.

Wal-Mart is drawing more heat than ever in its 42-year history. It has become perhaps the most disliked retailer in America today.

The Case Against Wal-Mart is presented as a legal brief against Wal-Mart - with "counts" against the company ranging from its employment practices to its "Made in America" mythology.

It presents evidence to make its case that Wal-Mart:

* Forces its own workers to labor "off the clock" without pay
* Uses overseas sweatshop labor to manufacture its corporate brand clothing
* Sells knock-off and counterfeit merchandise that misleads and confuses its customers
* Destroys acres of environmentally sensitive lands to build new Wal-Marts, close to existing Wal-Marts that will be closed
* Has eliminated all competition in many towns across the U.S. by illegally lowering prices below wholesale
* Has forced the movement of thousands of manufacturing jobs out of the U.S.
* Calls "full-time" 28 hours per week and pays wages so low that many of its employees qualify - and accept - welfare payments
* Demands millions of dollars in tax breaks to locate in communities all over the U.S., while it earns billions of dollars in profits.

Written by Al Norman, the world's foremost expert on and leader of the anti-sprawl movement, The Case Against Wal-Mart calls on consumers to go on a "Wal-Mart diet." Norman says that only a consumer boycott of Wal-Mart will show the company that U.S. citizens disapprove of its business tactics.

This is a book every American shopper should read before making another trip to Wal-Mart. As Al Norman says, "Friends don't let friends shop at Wal-Mart.".
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