The stick is the need to submit to the Wal-Mart way, including pricing that is expected to always go down.
They market their rooms the same way Wal-Mart markets a lot of its items: low price, low margin, but make it up on volume.
Judging by the way Wal-Mart Stores' stock price has held steady since the company announced last week that it would kick in more for employee healthcare, investors haven't panicked and started thinking the company is headed down a slippery slope toward higher costs.
Wal-Mart has learned the hard way that a first-mover advantage can be important in international retailing.
But the market is set up in such a way that nothing prevents Wal-Mart from selling excess juice back into the market--something experienced traders can do quite profitably.
It is not, in the way that Apple or Wal-Mart is, a mass marketer.
But the acquisition, he believed, was the only way to prevent Luxottica from being squeezed by discount chains like Wal-Mart--even if it meant competing with his best customers, small opticians then providing 90% of his sales.
Ralph Lauren and Wal-Mart may be learning that lesson the hard way.
Wal-Mart has similar experiments under way in the financial services industry.
At the Wal-Mart centre near Shenzhen, a vast effort is under way to link suppliers electronically to the retailer's systems only 30% have been plugged in so far, while the rest still need orders to be faxed to them.
Without enough employees to get the basic work of a retail operation done and with those on site being paid a wage so low that it is difficult to expect much in the way of pride or motivation Wal-Mart merchandise remains stacked on pallets in the warehouse rather than making it to the floor where customers can find the products they want.
Desperate for sales growth, struggling PC maker Dell has decided the quickest way to get it lies through retail king Wal-Mart Stores .
The plaintiffs won class-action status that could blow their ranks all the way up to 1.6 million, though Wal-Mart is appealing that decision.
Yet nobody had explained it in a way that also explained the success of Dell, Wal-Mart and the University of Phoenix.
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The way he sees it, the corporate dollars from sponsors like Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola, along television dollars from the Walt Disney Co.
The Environmental Protection Agency and some large business, including Wal-Mart, are aggressively promoting the sale of compact fluorescent light bulbs as a way to save energy and fight global warming.
The latter would be a step too far even for the most reforming firms but several large companies, including McDonald's and Wal-Mart, have said that they will consider some reforms to the way board members are elected.
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If Tokutek finds its way into Wal-Mart that will mean you can get through the checkout process much faster.
We believe Vudu has the potential to bring in a diversified revenue source for Wal-Mart and could equip the retail giant with expertise in online retailing and pave the way ahead for other online initiatives.
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His aim was to inspire marketers from Dow Chemical, General Mills, Wal-Mart and Xerox, among others, to sell more of their products the Obama way.
"We're proud of the Vudu brand and see it as a way to establish a new brand in the online business, " says Greg Hall, Wal-Mart's head of home entertainment.
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