Vendors at WalMart
The thing about business school is that at weird times you brain will suddenly switch to trying to apply school concepts to the real world, and you end up learning some pretty interesting things as a side-effect. My parents are in town, which meant yesterday involved a frantic trip to on the largest importer in the US to acquire some household supplies. It seems like every MBA in the US has done at least one case on WalMart , and you end up learning about its tremendous buyer power, unique (and recently changed) market positioning, how its competitive strategy/advantage evolved, and mostly about its ridiculously efficient supply chain. I wandered about recognizing some these patterns that I'd learned about, when for some reason I ended up striking a conversation with an elderly lady who seemed to be working in the greeting card section of the store. It turns out she didn't work for WalMart at all, but for Hallmark . She was just a Hallmark vendor who stocked card in the two ais...