This report discusses the corporate level strategies being followed by Walmart in their business operation and identifies gap areas in their current strategic intent. Alternative strategies are recommended for their long term effectiveness.
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Running head: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Strategic management Name of the student Name of the university Author note
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1STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Executive summary The aim of this report is to discuss about the corporate level strategies being followed by Walmart in their business operation. It is identified that they are following growth strategies in expanding their business across the world. In addition, this report also identified a few gap areas in the current strategic intent of Walmart and accordingly some alternative strategies are being discussed for their long term effectiveness.
2STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Table of Contents Introduction......................................................................................................................................3 Identification of the strategies.........................................................................................................3 Evaluation of the current strategies.................................................................................................4 Recommended strategies.................................................................................................................5 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6 Reference.........................................................................................................................................8
3STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Introduction Corporate level strategies are important for the business organizations in enhancing their long term business sustainability. Moreover, in the current time, high level of competition in the market is further increasing the importance for operational level strategies. However, different organizations initiate different types of strategies based on their business situations. Walmart is the leading retail brand in the world with having their presence in number of countries and serving millionsof customers(Akwetey,2015). Theyare operatinginone of the most competitive business sectors in the world with the presence of good number of competitors. Therefore, they are initiating a number of corporate level strategies according to their business requirements. This report will discuss about the corporate level strategies being initiated by Walmart in the recent time along with their suitability in the business scenario. A few gap areas will be identified and in accordance to these gap areas, a few recommended strategies will be discussed inthisreport.ThesestrategiescanfurtherhelpWalmartinenhancingtheirbusiness effectiveness. Identification of the strategies It is identified that Walmart had implemented different elements of growth strategies in their business operation. This is due to the reason that the three major available corporate level strategies are growth, stability and renewal. Walmart is not having the requirement for renewal strategy as they are not facing any business issues. On the other hand, Walmart is in the spree of expanding their business in different markets, which denotes that they are following growth strategies (Capello, Caragliu & Fratesi, 2015). It is identified that in terms of the growth
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4STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT strategies, Walmart is following different tactics such as initiating joint venture, acquisition and mergers to increase their business area. It should also be noted that Walmart was fist started in the United States and from there they are have became leading retail name in the world, which refers to their growth strategic approach. For instance, Walmart acquires the majority stake in the Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart in expanding in the Indian market. They have also acquired Art.com. On the other hand, Eko and Walmart are having joint ventures. These strategies are helping them in expanding in different sectors and increasing their revenue (Hammer et al., 2017). Evaluation of the current strategies In the current business scenario, the growth strategies being initiated by Walmart are suitable for their operation. This is due to the reason that among the three available corporate level strategies, only the growth approach can helps the business organizations in increasing their operation. According to Joseph and Kuby (2015), Walmart is still enjoying the market leadership in majority of their existing market but still their profitability and revenue are getting reduced due to the emergence of new competitors in the market. In addition, it is also being stated by the authors that in the recent time, national players from different countries are entering the foreign markets and posing more challenges for Walmart. Thus, as per these views of the authors, initiation of growth strategies is helping Walmart in increasing their market coverage area across the world and fending off the competition to some extent. The more will be the market growth and expansion, the more will be the revenue and sales volume of Walmart. On the other hand, it is stated by Nhundu et al. (2017) that Walmart is not having other options apart from the growth strategy to follow. This is due to the reason that renewal strategy is
5STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT not applicable for the profitable business like Walmart. Initiation of the stability strategy is also not applicable due to the reason that major market for them is the United States and stability strategy will also not be able to retain the current customer base for Walmart. This is due to the reason that United States is already having scores of retail brands operating. Thus, according to the authors, growth strategy is the only available option for Walmart in expanding their business beyond the United States and not getting restricted in a particular market. Zentes, Morschett and Schramm-Klein (2017) stated that emergence of the e-commerce is one of the major threats for the traditional retail brands such as Walmart. In this case, in the market of the United States, Walmart is facing the biggest challenge in the form of Amazon. However, on the other hand, Walmart is not having the required expertise in operating in the e- commerce segment and thus they cannot initiate their own online business to counter Amazon. Thus, as per the authors, Walmart is left only with the options of entering joint venture or acquiring other e-commerce firms to expand their growth in the online sector also. Thus, it can be stated that based on the views given by these authors, the current growth strategies being initiated by Walmart are suitable and effective in enhancing their business opportunities. Recommended strategies Even though the current corporate level strategies are well effective for Walmat in their long term business planning but there are certain gaps identified. One of the major gaps is the rapid loss of the market share in the United States. This is due to the fact that Walmart is losing their market share to the Target in the offline segment and to Amazon in the online segment. With Walmart focusing more on their growth strategies in expanding in the foreign countries, their home market is getting affected. Thus, it is recommended that apart from the growth
6STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT strategy they are following in the global market, Walmart should also follow stability strategy in the United States. It should be noted that the retail market of the United States is already saturated and there is less scope for further growth. Thus, it is important for Walmart to maintain their existing market share by the help of the stability strategy. On the other hand, it is also identified that Walmart is not making profit in all the foreign markets they are operating such as in South Korea, United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. In these countries, they are facing continuous losses and in this case, they should follow the renewal strategy. This is due to the reason that incurring losses for more time is only affecting the financial condition of Walmart and initiation of retrenchment policies will help in cutting these losses. It is reported that Walmart is selling their ASDA brand after incurring losses. Similarly, they are facing loss in Japan and thus it is recommended that renewal strategy should also be maintained to cut off the loss and focusing more on the profitable ventures. It is also being recommended in the growth strategies being initiated by Walmart, identification of the external factors is important. This is due to the reason that in Germany, Walmart faced challenged by not being able to sell at lower price than the standard price, which is not allowed in the country. This caused failure of their operation in Germany and they should have identified these factors prior to the entry in the country. Conclusion Thus, it can be concluded that current corporate level strategies being followed by Walmart are effective and suitable in line to their business environment. This report discussed about the effectiveness of their current growth strategies and how they are helping Walmart in gaining competitiveness in the global market. This report also identified a few gap areas in the
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7STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT current strategic intent of Walmart and in accordance to these gap areas, alternative strategies are being discussed. These will help them in improving their effectiveness in the long term.
8STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Reference Akwetey, L. M. (2015). Global Business Ventures, Foreign Direct Investment, Expansion, and Growth Strategies. InGlobal Enterprise Management(pp. 19-37). Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Capello, R., Caragliu, A., & Fratesi, U. (2015). Global trends and the economic crisis: Future alternative European growth strategies.Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 98, 120-136. Hammer, B., Knauer, A., Pflücke, M., & Schwetzler, B. (2017). Inorganic growth strategies and the evolution of the private equity business model.Journal of Corporate Finance,45, 31- 63. Joseph, L., & Kuby, M. (2015). Modeling retail chain expansion and maturity through wave analysis: Theory and application to Walmart and Target.International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research (IJAGR),6(4), 1-26. Nhundu, N., Paelo, A., Thosago, M., & Vilakazi, T. (2017). Growth and strategies of large and leadingfirms–Foodproductionandprocessingsectorassessment.Centrefor Competition, Regulation and Economic Development Working Paper,10, 2017. Zentes, J., Morschett, D., & Schramm-Klein, H. (2017). Growth Strategies. InStrategic Retail Management(pp. 141-161). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.