Wal-Mart Pulling Out of Korea
I went to Wal-Mart one time in Korea and never went back, so this isn’t a surprise to me:
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, said yesterday it was pulling out of the Korean market after eight years of doing business here.
Korea was Wal-Mart’s second foray into Asian markets; it began here with four outlets and later expanded to 16. The U.S. retail giant opened its first Asian outlets in China in 1996, two years before coming here.
At a press conference yesterday, Wal-Mart and Shinsegae executives announced the sale of Wal-Mart’s Korean assets to the nation’s largest retailer. Shinsegae, which runs the E-Mart discount chain, paid 825 billion won ($877 million) for Wal-Mart’s assets here.
Joe Hatfield, the president of Wal-Mart Asia, told the press conference that his company’s decision was based on an analysis that the company could not move up to second or third position in the retail market here in the next four or five years.
Beth Keck, the company’s spokeswoman, said, “We want to be able to grow in a market, and we saw it would be quite slow at this point in time.”
Wal-Mart is the second foreign mass retailer to fold its tent in Korea in the last month. In late April, Carrefour of France sold its stores here to Eland, another local retailer.
Wal-Mart has been struggling in Korea, losing 9.9 billion won last year on revenues of 728.8 billion won. It ranks last in sales among the five mass retailers in the market.
Read the rest of the article about why Wal-Mart failed in Korea. I tend to agree with a lot of what the Joong Ang had to say but the biggest thing that I think was their down fall was location. Just for the record Home Plus is my favorite shopping center in Korea.
