Braj Mohan Chaturvedi: 09/09/08

The retailers regard Sam Walton as the God of Retailing. He has written rules of retailing and rewritten them for the continuous growth. In 1962, Sam Walton founded his company with the three guiding principles that is regarded as the fundamental principles of success. These fundamental principles are relevant to retailer’s business across geography:

Respect the Individual
Our people make the difference – is a reality at Wal-Mart. The company believes that at Wal-Mart the groups of dedicated, hard-working, ordinary people coherently being teamed up, accomplish extraordinary things.

Service to the Customers
Customers are welcomed as messengers of Pluto – The Greek God of wealth and prosperity – at Wal-Mart. It is the continuous effort on the part of the earnest Wal-Mart’s employees to provide the best customer service at the lowest price. At Wal-Mart employee believes that they are nothing without customers and they make sure customer’s hard-earned money stretch further by offering quality merchandise at the lowest price and with the best customer service possible.

Strive for Excellence
Sam Walton believed in striving for excellence before it became fashionable. No wonder Wal-Mart is growing continuously in a large volume and can offers high quality products for low price, which is deserved by the customers. At Wal-Mart employees try to find innovative ways to push boundaries and constantly improve and innovate. They know that Sam Walton is never satisfied with the fact that prices are as low as they could be or that the products’ quality at Wal-Mart is as high as customers deserved.

These three fundamental principles has not only fueled the growth of the Wal-Mart but also help them innovate the way retailers do business. In my views if any retailers want to grow and make big in India or global landscape need to follow the basics of rule. I have seen many Indian retailers trying their hands with technology for success instead of sticking with the fundamentals. Probably they need to understand that technology is one of the elements of the fundamental principles not the mantra of growth.

Katyayana

This Blog is dedicated to all the Management Professionals who want to challenge the set pattern, who are practical in their approach and dont think in thin air; who believe that strategy is all about making things simple; who strongly advocate the “Rule of Simple” and who believe that impossible is nothing. - Just like Katyayana. Katyayana was a disciple of Gautama Buddha. He is also known as Kaccana or Kaccayana, Mahakatyayana, Mahakaccana and in Japanese as Kasennen. Katyayana is one of the “Ten Disciples of the Buddha”. Mahakashyapa, Ananda, Shariputra, Subhuti, Purna, Mahamaudgalyayana, Katyayana, Aniruddha, Upali and Rahula. He was foremost in explaining Dharma. He was born in a brahmin family at Ujjayini (Ujjain) and received a classical Brahminical education studying the Vedas. Katyayana was a Sanskrit grammarian, mathematician and Vedic priest who lived in ancient India, around the time of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. He is known for two works:- The Varttika, an elaboration on Panini’s grammar. Along with the Maha-bhasya of Patanjali, this text became a core part of the vyakarana (grammar) canon. This was one of the six Vedangas, and constituted compulsory education for Brahman students in the following twelve centuries.- He also composed one of the later Sulba Sutras, a series of nine texts on the geometry of altar constructions, dealing with rectangles, right-sided triangles, rhombuses, etc. Katyayana certainly have been a man of very considerable learning but probably not interested in mathematics for its own sake, merely interested in using it for religious purposes.He wrote the Sulbasutra to provide rules for religious rites and to improve and expand on the rules which had been given by his predecessors. Katyayana would have been a priest instructing the people in the ways of conducting the religious rites he describes. Authorship: Nettipakarana, a work of grammar, and Petakopadesa, a treatise on exegetical methodology, sulvasutras dealt with geometry.

Fundamental Principles of Retailing