International business(fail in emerging economies) Essay - 1

International business(fail in emerging economies) - Essay Example This is because globalization of markets, as Czinkota, et al (2010) says, has also led to the globalization of business risk. There can be a myriad of reasons for these divestments but there has not been any detailed research to investigate the underlying factors that affect the divestment. The most generic definitions of divestment is a situation where a business willingly sells off some of its assets as a result of a discontinuation of part of it operations (Nees, 1978). Divestments can therefore happen locally or in a situation where a firm requires divesting from a one of its overseas branch (Davis, 1974, p. 16). There are some generic reasons why a firm may opt to divest. These include raising funds, need to focus on core business, specialization, asset consolidation and cleansing (removing dysfunctional parts of the firm) etc (Hamilton & Chow, 1993, p.479). The current trend to divest from international markets may indicate that none of these may be involved and therefore there is a need to investigate the real dynamics behind multinational divestments from emerging markets. Wal-Mart is one of the oldest and most successful retail chains in the US. The firm runs hundreds of stores in America and across a number of other countries across the world (Wall Mart, 2013). Wal-Mart was one of the first retail chains to use information technology to help in meeting customers’ needs and also in increasing efficiency. To achieve this, the firm uses high end computer servers and system that make data sharing easy and efficient. The firm is able to have a real time data sharing using a wide area network that connects all its stores. With this kind of sharing of data the firm is able to increase efficiency and therefore make customer service better (Wall Mart, 2013). For instance, data collected at the point of sale units in every Wal-Mart satire is sent to a computer in real time. This data is used in managing inventory and also in helping