Wal-Mart's Dilemma In The 21st Century: Sales Growth Vs. Inventory Growth

摘要

Wal-Mart has been a leader in the retail industry since 1980s. In the 21st century, Wal-Mart's RFID initiative is another innovation for Wal-Mart's supply chain management. Wal-Mart's recent business target in the 21 Century is making a higher sales growth rate than inventory growth rate. Comparing with financial ratios of Wal-Mart's competitors, Wal-Mart has significantly better ratios for days-in-inventory, inventory-sales-ratio, and cash-conversion-cycle. However, there is no significant evidence of better ratios for supply chain related profit ratio. Regression analysis reveals that while days-in-inventory has a similar effect on both sales growth rate and inventory growth rate, supply chain ratio has more effect on inventory growth rate than sales growth rate.