INTRODUCTION TO WALMART
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc
is an American public corporation that runs a chain of large discount department stores and a chain of
warehouse stores. In 2010 it was the world's largest public corporation by
revenue, according to the Forbes Global 2000 for that year. The
company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October
31, 1969, and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972.
Wal-Mart, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, is the largest majority private employer and the largest grocery
retailer in the United States. In 2009, it generated 51% of its
US$258 billion sales in the U.S. from
grocery business. It also owns and operates the Sam's Club retail warehouses in North
America.Wal-Mart has 8500 stores in 15 countries, with 55 different names.
The company operates under its
own name in the United States, including the 50states. It also operates
under its own name in Puerto Rico. Wal-Mart operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the United Kingdom as Asda
in Japan as Seiyu, and in India as Best Price. It has wholly-owned
operations in Argentina, Brazil, and Canada.
Wal-Mart's investments outside North America have had mixed results :its
operations in the United Kingdom, South America and China are highly successful, while it was forced to pull out of
Germany and South Korea when ventures there were unsuccessful.
Walmart’s Mission Statement.
The company’s strategic decisions are also a direct manifestation of its
mission. Walmart’s mission statement is “Saving people money so they can live better.”
This statement is synonymous to the company’s slogan, “Save money. Live better.”
The firm follows and succeeds in fulfilling the “saving people money” component of the mission
statement. Consumers save money through Walmart’s low selling prices. However,
it is not yet clear if the company satisfies the “live better” component of the mission statement. There
are criticisms on Walmart’s very low wages that are barely enough for employees
to make ends meet. There are also criticisms about the long-term effects of the
firm’s continued large-scale sales of cheap and sometimes hazardous imported
goods.
Walmart’s Vision Statements
Walmart’s Vision Statement. The company traces its success to the ideals of its founder,
Sam Walton. These ideals are emphasized in Walmart’s vision statement: “To be the best
retailer in the hearts and minds of consumers and employees.” The company aims to achieve a top position in
the retail industry. Based on its current situation, the firm has already
fulfilled the “best retailer” part of the vision. Walmart’s vision statement also
points to the minds and hearts of the people that matter most to the business,
i.e. consumers and employees. The company has realistically influenced the
minds of consumers and employees on the basis of financial benefits. Employees
earn wages, while consumers save money through Walmart’s low prices. However,
the “heart” component of the
vision statement remains to be proven.
Strategic Analysis and
Recommendation for Walmart
Walmart’s strategies and strategic choices follow its mission
statement and vision statement. The company follows its vision and mission by
keeping its costs and prices low. This condition is based on the cost
leadership generic strategy in Porter’s model. The company also continues to
globally expand to keep supporting this generic strategy. Through expansion,
Walmart achieves better economies of scale, which support the cost leadership
strategy. The intensive strategies of market penetration and market development
also come along with such global growth and expansion.
For Walmart to succeed in fulfilling its vision statement and
mission statement in the long term, further expansion is needed. The
pressure of tough global competition can be addressed through aggressive growth
and expansion of the business. Walmart can expect resilience in its leadership
position in the retail industry through international growth and expansion.
Objectives
Objectives, goals and strategies should all be consistent with the
mission statement.
For example in 2008, Walmart’s identified three major issues that
were important to the company
The three major issues are:
·
health care
·
energy efficiency
·
ethical sourcing.
They have transformed these issues into broad
objectives that they wish to achieve are as follows:
1. Making Quality Health Care More Affordable and Accessible
2. Reducing Energy Costs for Our Customers
3. Ethical and environmentally responsible sourcing around the world,
including China
Further in 2015, Walmart announced a $2.7 billion investment over
two years in its U.S. workforce, including raising its minimum wage to $9 an
hour, implementing new training programs, and giving associates more control over
their schedules.
For each of these broad objectives they have specific goals with timelines and
for each goal the strategies on they are going to achieve these goals.
2) Identify and describe the four managerial functions that can be
applied in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Saudi Arabia
The organization function is to implement the workforce diversity plan.
Walmart has integrated the concept pf diversity into staffing human resources activities: diversity training, career advancement system, and compesation scheme setting.
Controlling
To ensure Equal Employment Opportunity Walmart has three controlling mechanism: monitoring of gender disparities, evaluation of managers, and evaluation of feedback by employees.
Planing
THE END
Problems of being a leader
Controlling customer behavior
Supervising Walmart
Walmart base their planning on basic beliefs of respect of the individual with background and personal beliefs,as well as diversity management.
With this planning system of Diversity and Inclusion Walmart has helped increase independent living, post-secondary training, and employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
Global Office of Diversity
With the initiative of fostering a high-performance culture based on inclusion
President's Global Council of Women Leaders
There is no doubt that the establishment of the office had placed the diversity issues in a higher priority in the daily management work.
Staffing
The company has inclusion training for new management associates for them to increase the inclusion of different identity groups and promote better teamwork by increasing participants.
Gender disparities
Race disparities
Monitoring
Analyzing the patterns of segregation and differences by gender and race in pay and career advancement on regular basis
The managers supervise the staff at the stores in order to keep things in check. The managers help employees if they are having trouble with something so that they can overcome them and do their job successfully.
Walmart controls customer behavior by making the products that are most likely to be bought together to make one of the products cheaper and the other a lot more expensive and in the end the customer ends up paying more that what they thought they were saving.
Managers have to take responsibility for other employees and their actions.
As well as keeping everything in the store in order and being on top of everything, productive.
Walmart has diverse servises. From banking to produce marketing; From eye care to health care; From home supplies to human necessities.
3)Explain
the different types of planning for the different levels of management in Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. KSA.
Include the typical time frame for which each plan is created?
Planning is determining organization’s goals
(specify future ends) and defining plans (specify today’s means) for achieving
them. Plan is a blueprint for goal achievement and specifies the necessary
resource allocations, schedules, tasks and other actions
Tactical
goals and plans are the responsibility of middle managers, such as the head of
major divisions or functional units that focus on the major actions that
division must take to fulfill its part in the strategic plan set by top
management. Walmart do super promotion aisle to shuffled departments for customer
to have easier shopping and maximizing demands for Walmart.
Operational
plans identify the specific procedures or processes needed at lower levels of
the organization, such as individual departments and employees. Front-line
managers and supervisors develop operational plans that focus on specific tasks
and processes and that help meet tactical and strategic goals by focusing on
customer satisfaction. Walmart improve customer shopping experience by
providing access and visibility to departments in the store that previously
difficult to shop.
2. Using
the concepts of strategic management and core competence, explain why Walmart
is scaling back on “cheap chic” fashion apparel in its remodeled
next-generation stores.
Strategic
management refers to the set of decisions and actions used to formulate and
execute strategies that will provide a competitively superior fit between the
organization and its environment so as to achieve goals. Walmart
is scaling back on “cheap chic” fashion apparel in its remodeled
next-generation stores is because Walmart have many product lines are getting
the axe. The product lines are getting axe because Walmart cut in merchandise
about 15% reduction in stock-keeping units (SKUs) which cause risky tradeoffs
for Walmart’s merchandising in the competitive environment. With fewer products
in stores, Walmart must be more selective about which products to carry and
more committed to selling in higher volume to increase store sales using fewer
stock items. “Cheap Chin” fashion apparel creates “Win, Play, Show” that guide
merchandising assortment decisions. According to Steve Banker, Walmart’s
planners are seeking to boost store efficiency by connecting in-store
merchandising with back-end logistics.
Core
competence is comparison between the organizations to its competitors in the
area of superior research and development, expert technological know-how,
process efficiency, or exceptional customer service. Walmart’
managers focus on a core competence of operational efficiency that enables them
to keep costs low. “Win, Play, Show” be the guide to merchandise assortment
decisions. According to Walmart executive vice presidents and chief operating
officer, Bill Simon, he mention that “Win, Play, Show” categories enables
Walmart have less and reduction inventory in the stores, thus it easier for
them to find and stock the shelves and order the products that they need from
the distribution center. Besides, Walmart motto “Save money. Live Better” also
ensure customer satisfaction as their ultimate goal. In this way, all income
earners can shop at Walmart with the advantage of low prices.
3. What
started the decision-making process that led to the overhaul of Walmart’s U.S.
stores? What common errors in decision-making could thwart the success of
Project Impact?
The
decision-making process that led to the overhaul of Walmart’s U.S. stores start
with recognition of decision requirement in the form of either a problem or an
opportunity. For
Walmart, managers see opportunity exists when potential accomplishment exceeds
specified current goals in enhancing performance beyond current levels. This
can be seemed when in 2008, Walmart announced remodeling efforts to improve the
Walmart Shopping experience and increase sales. 70% of U.S. stores will undergo
an upgrade by the end of2012, the remaining renovations will wrap up in 2014.
Common
errors in decision-making that could thwart the success of Project Impact is
overconfidence. Many company have unrealistic expectations and overestimate of
their ability to understand the risks, make the right choice and predict
uncertain outcomes. Project Impact should not be established during financial
crisis. This is because during U.S. economy sagged, only higher-income
customers have the ability to shopping at Walmart with the advantage of low
prices and this situation is unfair to low-income customers where cause Walmart
began to lost their other income level customers. Besides, the management also
concluded to create a better atmospherics that could transform only
economy-conscious visitors into Walmart loyal customers. This overconfidence
and strategy could cause Walmart to make numerous poor decisions which can led
to disaster and risks.
3) Identify the probable
stakeholder for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. KSA.
Effective stakeholder engagement
contributes both directly and indirectly to the bottom line. This post provides
a sample of some proven benefits of stakeholder engagement for the major
stakeholder groups. What is exciting, is that the generic communication skills
at the heart of engagement are effective in diverse stakeholder settings.
Surely engagement capability has to be a top priority for organisational development.
Financiers
Companies with better CSR performance “face significantly lower capital constraints”. Beiting Cheng, Ioannis Ioannou and
George Serafin’s research, confirms their hypothesis that:
…better access to finance can be
attributed to reduced agency costs, due to enhanced stakeholder engagement
through CSR and reduced informational asymmetries, due to increased
transparency through non-financial reporting.
Employees
An impressive array of research and
anecdotal reporting evidences the vital importance of effective employee engagement.
Here are a couple of examples:
§ David McLeod, in a report to the British
government in 2008 estimated the cost to the UK economy of their
low levels of engagement to be between £59 and £65 billion pounds.
§ Recent Gallup research identified a high
correlation between effective engagement and high earnings per share (eps).
Companies with “exceptional employee engagement” achieved eps more than four
times that of their industry competitors.
By engaging employers, companies are engaging their engagers.
Customers
Gallup also provide impressive figures for those companies that engage
effectively with customers.
Our studies reveal that customers
who are fully engaged represent an average 23% premium in terms of share of
wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth than the average
customer. Actively disengaged customers represent a 13% discount in those same
measures.
Suppliers
Community
Witold Henisz led a major Wharton School research project
delivering evidence of the financial benefits of effective stakeholder
engagement in gold mines in Spinning
Gold: The Financial Returns to External Stakeholder Engagement. The
research team studied the impact of stakeholder engagement on the financial
performance of gold mines and gold
mining companies. They created an index based on 50,000 stakeholder events
from the activity of 26 gold mines.
Increased productivity of the effective engagers where able to
start mining earlier than poor engagers .
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