Question: Walmart, Ikea, McDonald's and Southwest Airlines adopted the business practice of minimizing costs to pass the savings on to customers, and have advertised their companies as the low-cost leaders in their respective industries. However, not all businesses are large enough to adopt this business practice. Wal Mart can because of their large scale and extremely efficient supply chain. There has been much controvery over their tactics of using cheap labor from foreign markets to achieve these cost savings, but yet millions of people support the company because of the cost savings they offer. There is controversy over how some of the low-cost leaders achieve their cost savings and the impact their scale has on local small businesses who cannot compete based on price. What other options do small business owners have in their favor to effectively compete against large low-priced competitors?