According to Forbes Magazine, emerging competitors, such as amazon.com, take advantage of the ease associated with shopping at home, while Sam’s Club uses the expansive influence of Wal-Mart to balance Costco’s exemplary membership expansion, which grows at a rate of about 10% per year (Trefis Team, 2014). With these factors taken into consideration, it is becoming increasingly relevant for investors and lenders to pay close attention to Costco’s past performance, as well as future planning and operations. One starting point is to focus on some of Costco’s major strengths of member loyalty resulting in increased revenue, Return on Equity (ROE), and stock ratios are in stark contrast to their major weaknesses of maintaining relevance in an increasingly competitive market, geographic limitations, and sharp rise in current…