Organisational Communication: Analysis of Walmart Inc.

This report analyses Walmart Inc. and its goals, marketing and management strategies, SWOT analysis, social media presence, website, and communication strategy with the public.

Running head: ORGANISATIONAL COMMUNICATION
Organisational Communication
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Discussion..............................................................................................................................2
2.1 Background of the company-...........................................................................................2
2.2 Company goals and objectives-.......................................................................................3
2.3 Marketing strategies.........................................................................................................3
2.4 Management style............................................................................................................4
2.5 SWOT analysis.................................................................................................................5
2.6 Social media presence......................................................................................................7
2.7 Website.............................................................................................................................9
2.8 Communication strategy with the public and its quality................................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................................11
References:...............................................................................................................................12

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1. Introduction
In this current era, knowledge plays a very crucial role in the economic processes.
Such organisation that have enough knowledge do have a competitive advantage over the
others with lesser skills and knowledge. In a knowledge based economy, innovation plays the
central part. A company could maintain a competitive advantage by means of price, quality
and employee satisfaction (Saeidi et al., 2015). The companies does innovation so as to
maintain and defend their competitive stand as well as to seek their competitive advantage.
However, for this report, the organisation that has been chosen is Walmart Inc., an American
multinational retail company which operates a chain of grocery stores, departmental stores
and hypermarkets. It is going to elaborate on analysing this company, its goals and strategies
of marketing and management that it makes use of to gain a competitive advantage. It shall
also discuss about its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It would also assess its
social media presence and would evaluate the quality of their communication about its goals
and achievements with the public.
2. Discussion
2.1 Background of the company-
As discussed above, Walmart is an American multination retail corporation which
runs the chains of large warehouse stores and department stores. It was founded in the year
1962 by Sam Walton and was incorporated in the year 1969 (Barney & Peteraf, 2014). It
publicly traded in the year 1972 on the New York Stock Exchange. The headquarter of
Walmart is located in Bentonville, Arkansas. It is also to state that it is the second largest
public corporation in the world as per the list of Fortune Global 500 in the year 2013 (Morris,
2016). It also holds the position of the world’s biggest private employer and is considered to
be one of the most valuable organisations in the world. It is family owned business and is

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owned and controlled by the Walton family. The family owns 48% stake in Walmart. At
present, Walmart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States.
The organisation also operates and owns the warehouses of Sam’s Club based in
North America. It operates in more than 10,900 retail units and that too under sixty nine
banners located in 27 different countries along with its e-commerce websites in ten nations
(Getkate, 2017). They employ about 2.2 million of associates all around the globe and among
them, 1.3 million associates are from United States alone.
2.2 Company goals and objectives-
The main aim of the company is to create opportunities for people to live their life
better. They consider it as their responsibility to make a constructive impact on the
communities that they serve. Their vision is to offer good services with good quality to all
their customers while remaining the market leader as well as striving regularly in order to be
the most loved and admired company (Elder & Dauvergne, 2015). However, the vision
statement of the company focuses on the quality of the product, lower product price along
with manufacturing and growth opportunities for its employees. With the same, its mission
statement describe about enhancing and improving the daily life of the customers through
selling best quality products all around the world. The objectives of the company is also the
same and it is of providing best quality services and products to its customer globally as well
as to provide employment opportunities to the worthy talents. Furthermore, it also wants to
expand its multi-channel initiatives while keep on growing in the United States.
2.3 Marketing strategies
Walmart makes use of demographic and psychographic segmentation strategy as this
strategy helps in assessing and understanding the various sub-segments of the customers as
well as their changing needs and requirements. It understands the spirit of the customers as

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well as knows that what they actually want every day and that is- they want their daily goods
at lower prices. Hence, the company has introduced the EDLP (Every Day Low Prices)
strategy.
With the same, the company also makes use of the undifferentiated targeting strategy
in order to apprehend the global market. It does not the differentiated strategy to a greater
advantage as everyone is a prospect for this company. However, the product price is the key
differentiator for this company. Also, Walmart makes use of positioning strategy and it plays
a great role in the overall success of the company (Martynov, 2017). It has positioned itself as
an organisation that offers the products as the lowest price possible. It also makes use of the
pricing advantage in order to be sustainable in its very own business model. As because of its
so low price positioning, the company has destroyed many of the smaller retailers over the
years of its existence.
“Black Friday” is one among the most famous events of Walmart that offers huge
variety of products and services at just throw-away prices. It is considered to be its most
successful strategies that is being copied by many of the retail companies all over the globe.
Walmart is continuously motivating its employees for making a commitment for
exceling in the business and it is seen in the quality of the company’s customer care services
that it provides at the store. It achieves the same by making sure that all its employees are
becoming a part of its business objectives and goals. The culture of Walmart is defined
through the manner in which each and every employee makes continual effort which they
always maintain the top most position that the organisation holds.
2.4 Management style
The classical perspective of management comprise of the scientific management in
the Walmart which are focused on improving the productivity of the employers, the

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bureaucratic companies is managed on a rational and an impersonal basis and this makes the
manager to use power instead of personality for administrative and delegating the principles
that are focused on the whole organisation (Vidgen, Shaw & Grant, 2017).
2.5 SWOT analysis
As it is discussed by one of the employee of Walmart, the below mentioned strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats present for the company are been evaluated:
Strengths-
 It has a very good brand image in the field of retail business. It emulates both the
quality as well as the value of the product. It is helping in retaining the existing
customers’ loyalty and is also playing the part of a magnet in attracting more new
customers towards its operation.
 It is providing a wide range of products that are likely to satisfy the most of their
needs and therefore, it can be said that Walmart is being very convenient to all its
consumers.
 It has acquired some major retail companies such as ASDA (UK) and this is making it
easy for Walmart to enter into international countries.
 The company is also making optimal use of the technologies in order to manage the
logistic operations at both domestic and global level (Castillo et al., 2018). This is
helping Walmart to smoothen its task of procurement. It is also to note that by the
help of the arts technologies, the company has attained the potential of defeating
strong competition and at the same time, it has gained the ability of catering to the
needs of the large market.
 As because of the fact that the company has exposed to the international markets, it
has now gathered an expertise in operating at both the national and global level

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(Dubey et al., 2017). In this way, as the company size has been increased, so is its
ethnic diversity and market coverage.
Weaknesses-
 Walmart is still limited to only few number of countries and it is facing difficulties in
entering in other countries in the recent years. Like for example, in India it operates as
cash and carry with the bharitis and there, the company is not allowed for setting up
its own retail chain.
 It does not serve to the same variety of products lines like any single brand retailer
would.
 There is a huge diversity in the range of suppliers of Walmart and this is making the
supply chain of the company more complicated (Elder, 2016). This in turn also
increasing the frequency of logistic.
Opportunities
 It could open up fashion goods category in its wide range of products and could
decrease in the disposal income
 The increase in sustainability as well as wealth of the middle class is one of the most
significant opportunities available for Walmart (Jacobs & Singhal, 2017)
 There is a retail market growth in the emerging markets
 Customers today have become more health conscious than ever before. They are
rapidly choosing health over taste. This is also a great opportunity for Walmart to
flourish in its business of healthy and quality services
 With the advancement of science and technology and in this period of globalisation,
there is huge growth in the field of online shopping.

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 With the same, through merging with the global retail companies, Walmart could gain
local knowledge very easily and would not make the common ethnic mistake which
might prove to be catastrophic (Bai, Sarkis & Dou, 2017). It would help it in
strengthening their existing operations as well as prevailing over their competitors.
Threats
 It is facing stiff competitions from both the national and international players
(Katiuscia Moreno Galhera & Veiga, 2018). It is putting a constant pressure on
Walmart in order to maintain and retain its customers as well as acting as a barrier in
developing new business strategies or implementing those strategies throughout its
business. Some of its key competitors include Sears, Target and K-Mart (Duggal &
Verma, 2017).
 Now a days, there is a huge increase in the expenses required for expanding a
business internationally.
 Also, the stringent banking rules and regulations by RBI is acting as a strong threat in
operating retail chains in the market (Kashyap, Bhandari & Jaswani, 2016).
 As because of the fact that the option of outsourcing is available for many of the
manufacturing companies today, the price of the products have been significantly
brought down and this has resulted in price wars among the retailers.
2.6 Social media presence
In today’s world, social media is playing the role of the most vital marketing channels
for each and every company as because of the fact that it offers a unique way to them to
communicate and get in touch with their customers worldwide (Moreno-Munoz et al., 2016).
 Facebook- Walmart has put in a great effort in the development of its Facebook page
and has also embraced the timeline in order to showcase how it has grown over such

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as short period of time. It has now gathered more than 26 million fans worldwide,
which is an increase of 9 million since July. It constantly keep its fans confused
through providing them with a wide range of updates.
Fig 1: Facebook Page of Walmart
 Twitter- Walmart generally makes use of Twitter in order to post different questions with
different topics of sports and caption contests for its followers as well as requests for
retweets if they agree with it on a certain statement. Majority of its tweets get good
number of responses and it really does a great job in answering the users. It has the
hashtag of #WalmartElves so as to help it customers in gathering information about gift
inspiration. It also operates many different Twitter accounts which focus on its healthy
food, community programs, sustainable initiatives and charity programs. It is also to note
that Walmart has managed to gather more than 308,000 followers in its main twitter
account.

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Fig 2: Twitter Page of Walmart
 Pinterest- Walmart have a total of two Pinterest accounts. One is aimed at product
ideas and the other one is promoting green living. The former account has more than
13,000 followers and has also created near about 66 boards. The later too has more
than 2,000 followers. Its main account makes use of marvellous imagery in order to
promote innovative and creative ideas in many special occasions such as Easter,
Mother’s day and has also created seven new boards for the Christmas alone.
Fig 3: Pinterest page of Walmart
2.7 Website
For the convenience of its customers, Walmart has introduced its personal websites
for online orders and services. Its website has more than 100 million of monthly visitors as

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compare to its rival company- the Amazon-com, which has 180 million (Turban et al., 2017).
It is also planning to redesign its website by cluttering the listings of the products and de-
emphasing its name. The main goal to do so is to make their website more appealing to the
higher end brands as well as to encourage the shoppers for browsing new products. Its
website link is- www.walmart.com.
2.8 Communication strategy with the public and its quality
The marketing budget of Walmart is equal to 204 billion USD in the year 2015 and
2014 and around 2.3 billion USD in the year 2013. All these funds are invested in the
marketing communication of Walmart and this include media and print advertisement, sales
promotions, viral marketing, public relations, events and experiences as well as direct
marketing components of the marketing communication mix (Hisrich & Ramadani, 2017).
Earlier, the media and the print advertising has represented as a core of the marketing strategy
of Walmart for huge number of years. However, in the year 2015, the Vice President of
Walmart- Wanda Young had announced a planned shift in the main focus of it from print
advertising to mobile marketing campaigns. With the same, the viral marketing is also one of
the other directions that has been extensively used by the company with different level of
success. Like, for example, the marketing video of Walmart- “Work is a Beautiful Thing:
Meet Patrick”, which was released in the year 2014 has attracted many viewers in just 6 days
along with thousands of constructive and positive feedbacks as well as with positive
implications on the company’s brand image. However, it is also to note that the company is
still making use of media and print advertising to a good extent and it places advertisement
on the magazines, TV channels and newspapers that are popular among the target consumer
segment (Edgerly, 2015). It also uses sales promotion on a regular basis, especially before
and during the public holidays or other special occasions, particularly, as mentioned above,
the Black Friday is a great promotion day for this company which is anticipated by millions

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and millions of customers every year. It also maintains a section of Daily Saving Centre in its
website where both the online and the offline sales promotion offers are been announced. It is
also adapted as a very effective tool in increasing the sales of the Sam’s Club segment of the
Walmart business. Hence, it can be said that the quality of communication strategy that
Walmart is currently using to get in touch with its customers is quite high and impressive.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that Walmart is one of the undisputed
leaders in the retail industry and that it has set and benchmarked for about multitude of
practices which is helping it in maintaining its position in the market. It is also the best when
it comes to the issue of supply chain management and marketing by means of promotional
strategies. However, as now Walmart has become an international player, it must try hard to
avoid the cultural mistakes such as what happened in Germany. In Germany it has made the
employees working there to sing the national anthem of United States. It has proved to be a
catastrophic for their brand image. However, its innovation strategy is indeed unique as well
as SMART and the main reason behind this is the fact that its strategy is specific, measurable,
attainable and timely. It is specific as because of the fact that the company venture into a
specific market, then establishes and finally compete. In its innovation strategy, the attainable
and measurable targets are set. One can easily see it in the manner it produces a particular
product for a particular market, e.g. the Green Bulb. Today, each and every body is
encouraged towards going green so that to curb the global warming and Walmart has curved
the niche setting attainable and measurable targets.

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