Business Environment Report - Management 11, Semester 1, 2019/20

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the business environment, focusing on the competitive landscape and organizational structures of major companies. It examines the business environments of Alibaba, Walmart, and eBay, including their size, scope, product offerings, vision, mission, business objectives, organizational structures, legal structures, and stakeholders. The report further explores the business functions in relation to the organizational structures of these companies. The analysis includes a comparison of the companies' strategies, market positions, and competitive advantages, providing insights into their operations and stakeholder relationships. The report concludes with a summary of key findings and implications for business development in the e-commerce and retail sectors. The assignment also requires a PowerPoint presentation including PESTLE and SWOT/TOWS analysis.

Running Head: MANAGEMENT 0
BUSINESS ENVIROMENT

MANAGEMENT 1
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Overview of the different types of organizations.......................................................................2
Size and Scope of the different organizations............................................................................3
Product and Services Supplied...................................................................................................4
Vision, Mission and Business Objectives..................................................................................4
Organizational and Legal Structure...........................................................................................5
Stakeholders...............................................................................................................................6
Business Function in relation to the Organizational Structure...................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10

MANAGEMENT 2
Introduction
The contemporary business scenario embraces a number of types of businesses which any
organisation has to deal with in order to attain competitive edge in the marketplace.
According to Tan and Meyer (2010), various types of businesses can be of many shapes, size
and should cover a number of attributes in order to ensure that they all have their significant
market. With regards to this, various type of businesses exists in the industry and can give
strong competition to any of the incorporated company or even a start-up including public,
private and voluntary associations. Each of the businesses has their own market
characteristics and scope which help them attain potential business notions in the
marketplace. Hung et al (2010) also stated that each function of the business with
organisation has also an inter-relationship with the organisational structure, the bigger the
functions of the company, the greater the structure of the enterprise. This report outlines the
overview of many types of organisation in the province of UK, along with the business
functions associated to the organisational structure is also given for the Alibaba. It starts with
the background details of Amazon.
Overview of the different types of organizations
One of the prominent e-commerce company i.e. Amazon delivers a personalised platform to
the users and customers so that they can effectively buy varieties of products from its e-
commerce sire. The company was incorporated in 1995 and to its commencement, Amazon is
doing constant innovation with transforming the way people used to buy products from the
traditional stores. Currently, the company has expanded its footprints in more than 16 nations
with having employees around 6, 50,000 globally. With regards to this, 2018 proved to be a
golden year for the company as Amazon earned $232.88 billion in terms of revenue and it is
increased at a rate of $232.88 billion in relation with the 2017 year (statista.com, 2018). In
addition, the users have a high loyalty towards the brand and therefore, the company has
more than 100 million Prime members all over the world. Some of the products and services
under its private label brand includes Amazon Basic, Kindle, Echo Alexa and Fire Stick. The
three organizations which can give Amazon tremendous level of competition include Alibaba

MANAGEMENT 3
Group Holding Limited from e-commerce industry, Walmart Incorporation from retail sector
and eBay, a multinational e-commerce corporation.
Scope and size of the different organizations
The size of the three organisations considered in the study namely Alibaba, Walmart and
eBay are different as they belong to different genres, platform and countries. Considering
Size, Alibaba inside China is biggest but not only online shopping site with Tabao and TMall.
The company sold a huge number of items (i.e. the combination of Amazon and eBay) with
having a payment system named as Alipay as a standard mean of paying something online.
At a peak of event, more than 2.85 million transactions were managed every minute by
Alipay (Larson, 2015). The company target lower, middle and the richer sections of the
society. The scope of Alibaba is to offer high quality e-commerce and other services to
various people through which the company can earn profit and also make them one of the top
e-commerce brand in the industry.
Walmart incorporation is a retail superstore chain operated in UK as ASDA (known to be
second largest supermarket in Britain) (Sparks, 2011). With regards to this, Walmart is giving
tough competition by rebranding its e-commerce platform. Currently, Walmart has over
4,769 physical stores and is now leveraging them to expand its online offerings. In addition,
Walmart is also planning to expand in Asia countries especially India and therefore, the
company has acquired Flipkart recently, known as one of the biggest Indian brands in terms
of revenue. In terms of scope, Walmart has been able to gain big market share by selling
almost everything and being almost everywhere. In addition, the company meet the demand
of various segments by being as a multiple-store format such as discount stores,
neighbourhood markets, Sam’s Club warehoused and Walmart Supercentres.
The size of eBay is large as it has already extended its footprint to over two dozen nations
together with India and China. eBay has similar business model as Alibaba and enables
commerce through three reportable segments i.e. payments, marketplaces and enterprise. The
company offers a huge selection of inventory internationally. The scope of the organization is
to facilitate the sale of goods between third party buyers and sellers. With regards to this, the
company also offers necessary recommendations to sellers and other associated parties for
posting the advertisement in best possible way.

MANAGEMENT 4
Product and Services Supplied
The products and services supplied by Alibaba include E-commerce, retail service platform,
Cloud computing, online payment platforms, internet and entertainment services and various
others services to the people who are ready to pay to the company due to accessibility and
convenience attribute (Tan et al, 2015). The company also offers post based services to the
sellers while charging no fee for product listing. This help the company to leave its positive
footprint all over the world and ultimately increases consumer loyalty.
Walmart deals with the people who seek for photo services, retail goods, pharmacy, financial
services and wireless services and the company is targeting various segments in the industry
and also expanding its footprints with significant mergers and acquisitions. For instance,
Walmart acquires ASDA in 1999 to tap the market of UK and at that time Asda owned 229
stores and currently, it has more than 632 UK stores. Walmart has been formed for those
people who seek all household items at one place and therefore look for prices which are
comparatively affordable (Chuang et al, 2011).
eBay offers products on its e-commerce sites with other services also such as selling services
i.e. listing and management solutions, bidding and buying services and advanced seller
recommendations. As eBay has two faced business model, both customers and sellers are
benefitted from the company.
Vision, Mission and Business Objectives
The vision of Alibaba is to develop the future infrastructure of commerce. The company
visualise that its consumers will collaborate, work and live at Alibaba and that they will be an
organisation that lasts at least 102 years. To make it easy to do business anywhere effectively
and efficiently is their mission. The business objective of Alibaba to resolve the challenges of
small businesses in sales, procurement and promotion, financing and management with the
help of information technology.
The vision of Walmart is to be the target for customers save money, no matter how they want
to shop. This vision statement was articulated in 2017 investment community meeting and the
company previous vision statement was to be the top retailer in the minds of employees and
consumers (Cuofano, 2019). The variation highlight shows the removal of employees and this

MANAGEMENT 5
can be possibly due to drop of support for employees. The mission statement of Walmart is
also somehow related with its vision and it is crafted as “to save people money so that they
can live better”. It is clear that the company business strategy here involves using price as a
selling point to target prospective customers. At last, the business objectives of Walmart is to
use its scale and size to offer access to superior quality goods at everyday low prices with
building opportunities for its associated and medium sized global suppliers.
The vision of eBay is to be the global favourite destination for exploring unique value and
great selection. It impulses for e-commerce direction in the online retail marketplace and
hence attaining significant strategic management way for attaining lead position in the sector
(Allison, 2017). On the other hand, the company mission is to offer an international trading
platform where essentially everyone can trade nearly anything. The business objective of the
company is to augment its revenue from the eBay marketplace and therefore, directing their
strategies to draw the interest of new users.
Organizational and Legal Structure
Amazon.com Inc.’s organizational structure aids in extensive control on international e-
commerce operations and it classified as hierarchical. The company structure includes core
commerce, media and mobile entertainment, Cloud Computing, innovation initiatives and
leading investee corporations. The senior management executives include CEO as Jack Ma’s,
Senior Vice Presidents and one Worldwide Controller and they are accountable for
significant business practices and report right to the CEO. There are more than 1,01,958
employees in the company and millions of customers globally (statista.com, 2019).
Considering internal structure, there are some significant segments named as human resource
division, information technology, legal operations and many more, directly reporting to the
CEO of Alibaba. The legal structure of Alibaba is very strong as the company is backed by a
number of lawyers and other people who have good knowledge about law. The company has
mentioned this section separately on its website named as “Legal information”.
Walmart organisational structure is based on two attributes i.e. hierarchy and function based
definition. Traditionally, Walmart leadership put significant efforts in adding the values of its
creator Sam Walton into the organisational culture. The company structure is very

MANAGEMENT 6
hierarchical as of huge size and there are 12 members in board of directors including two of
Walton family. Enrique Ostalé is the Executive Vice President and Regional CEO – U.K
(corporate.walmart.com, 2019). The key impact of Walmart hierarchical functional
organisational structure is the capability of business managers to effectively impact the
complete organisations. The legal structure is definitely strong and complex as the company
have its presence in more than 27 countries with operating over 11, 300 retail units and also
633 stores throughout the United Kingdom as of 2019.
The organisational structure of eBay is multidivisional business-type that involves and
signifies each type of firm e-commerce business operations. For instance, eBay has division
for its online operations. In 2015, the company have a major restructuring after with
separation from PayPal (Cheng, 2014). There is a team of 11 members in board of directors
with and company as more than 14,000 people worldwide. The legal structure of eBay is very
strong as the company was founded a long time back and currently having its operations
globally.
Stakeholders
The stakeholders work either for the voluntary purpose or due to their benevolent reasons
(Bhattacharya, Korschun and Sen, 2009). The stakeholders of Alibaba are the management,
employees, shareholders, and even the sellers who posted the listing on their webpage (Bell,
et al. 2015). Alibaba stakeholders have their own range of benefits which they develop from
the company in relation of profit and loss. For instance, Blackrock Incorporation is the third
largest shareholder in Alibaba with 67.7 million shares helping the company in market
development and expansion (bourse.lu, 2012).
The stakeholders of Walmart are the government, consumers, competitors and employees
who work in the organizations. Being a leading company in retail market, the organization
provides services to the people due to their aim of having a unified system of selling. Alibaba
also has various external stakeholders including retailers, government, consumers/merchants,
competitors and suppliers.
eBay key stakeholders are the buyers and sellers who transact using the company platform
and undertake various other functions. The employees of eBay also considered as its key

MANAGEMENT 7
stakeholders as they are the ones who are affected due to company decreasing rate of growth
percentage year by year.
Business Function in relation to the Organizational
Structure
The above diagram showed an outline of various functional areas of Alibaba Group including
four main division i.e. cloud computing, core commerce, media and mobile entertainment and
other innovative initiatives. Various types of business functions of Alibaba to the
organisational structure includes –
 To help people all over the world with the required e-commerce services at affordable
rates.
 To ensure that all segments of people can get services from Alibaba and become loyal
towards to the company.
 To check that company profit will continuously increase at a high rate as this will help
the company to expand into more countries.
The functions correlate in the organisational chart and explore the benefits and drawbacks of
the organisational structure. Being a global multinational company, the company have
Alibaba Group
Core Commerce Cloud Computing Media and Mobile
Entertinment
Other innovative
initiatives
Retail Commerce in China
Wholesale Commerce in
China
Global and Cross boarder
Commerce
Alibaba Cloud
Allyun.com
UCWEB
Alibaba Music
Ali Pay
Alibaba
Pictures

MANAGEMENT 8
different business units and top executives who control the company operates in different
countries and with different rules. David Lloyd is the head of Alibaba UK (Smith, 2018).
The interrelations of these functions can be understood by seeing their dependability and
convenience. For example, Alibaba cloud is used by various other division of the brand such
as e-commerce platform, Alipay and so on. Similarly, the company payment system is also
handled through its other roots of operations and allow consumers a unified system of
experience. Such functions also contribute into building a robust organisational structure with
offering the support to the organisation to compete in the competitive world.
In relation with organisation structure, the benefit of such system ensures the availability of
superior practices for all the consumers and sellers and disadvantage for the system is related
with the fact that the overall business model of the company still lacks some functional
elements like of Walmart and eBay. The structure of Alibaba is large because of more
number of employees and members at various levels. It helps the company in its market
development and diversification and therefore, sustain the organisation growth for a long
period of time.

MANAGEMENT 9
Conclusion
In the limelight of above discussion, it is important for Amazon to explore its own target
customer base to attain competitive edge in the market and sustain lead position against
Alibaba, Walmart and eBay. Amazon organisation structure plays a significant role in the
success of the enterprise including the CEO (Jeff Bezos) positive leadership style. With
regards to this, the company also has different stakeholders (both internal and external) just
like their competitors eBay, Walmart and Alibaba. It is important for the company to cater
the demand of each and every stakeholder on order to ensure company competitive position.
In relation with second learning outcome, the report states how Alibaba functions are inter-
related and rely on each other for effective functioning. Considering these, organisation
functions can be understood in more effective way. At last, it can be said that various types of
businesses have connection with the structure of the system so as to ensure that the business
functions are appropriate.

MANAGEMENT 10
References
Allison, J. (2017) E-Commerce and the Newpaper Industry: Determinants to First-
Movership. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 16(1), pp.225-243.
Bhattacharya, C.B., Korschun, D. and Sen, S. (2009) Strengthening stakeholder–company
relationships through mutually beneficial corporate social responsibility initiatives. Journal
of Business ethics, 85(2), pp.257-272.
bourse.lu. (2012) Annual Report 2012 [ONLINE] Available from: https://dl.bourse.lu/dl?
v=ADyMFy5zxNFitbuuk6wDBqkLedwC+hPSoOim8K9fRFcqQm/
2UDnemgsnvLpEOFSnwAi1q4XWkDJTbqZfL3/
oXx2P0LDx7BXDU13dVqZ0NteVkUrAa62Q8HcTFkqgifOl+JebANEpoD3Y4a6ARS9k+r8
5UnkCDOVZwjkuFpqErro= [Accessed 30/09/2018].
Cheng, R. (2014) eBay, PayPal to split into separate companies in 2015 [ONLINE]
Available from: https://www.cnet.com/news/ebay-to-split-paypal-into-separate-company-in-
2015/ [Accessed 03/06/2019].
Chuang, M.L., Donegan, J.J., Ganon, M.W. and Wei, K. (2011) Walmart and Carrefour
experiences in China: resolving the structural paradox. Cross Cultural Management: An
International Journal, 18(4), pp.443-463.
corporate.walmart.com. (2019) Executive Vice President and Regional CEO – U.K., Latin
America and Africa, Walmart International [ONLINE] Available from:
https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/leadership/executive-management/enrique-ostale/
[Accessed 03/06/2019
Cuofano, G. (2019) Walmart Mission Statement and Vision Statement In A Nutshell
[ONLINE] Available from: https://fourweekmba.com/walmart-vision-statement-mission-
statement/ [Accessed 03/06/2019].
Hung, R.Y.Y., Yang, B., Lien, B.Y.H., McLean, G.N. and Kuo, Y.M. (2010) Dynamic
capability: Impact of process alignment and organizational learning culture on
performance. Journal of World Business, 45(3), pp.285-294.

MANAGEMENT 11
Larson, C. (2015) Alipay Leads a Digital Finance Revolution in Chinaw [ONLINE]
Available from: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534001/alipay-leads-a-digital-finance-
revolution-in-china/ [Accessed 03/06/2019].
Smith, O. (2018) Just What Is Alibaba Up To In Europe? [ONLINE] Available from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliversmith/2018/06/22/just-what-is-alibaba-up-to-in-europe/
#6122618d396d [Accessed 03/06/2019].
Sparks, L. (2011) Settling for second best? Reflections after the tenth anniversary of Wal-
Mart's entry to the United Kingdom. International Journal of Retail & Distribution
Management, 39(2), pp.114-129.
statista.com. (2018) Annual net revenue of Amazon from 2004 to 2018 (in billion U.S.
dollars) [ONLINE] Available from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266282/annual-net-
revenue-of-amazoncom/ [Accessed 30/09/2018].
statista.com. (2019) Number of full-time employees at Alibaba from 2012 to 2019 [ONLINE]
Available from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/226794/number-of-employees-at-
alibabacom// [Accessed 30/09/2018].
Tan, B., Pan, S.L., Lu, X. and Huang, L. (2015) The role of IS capabilities in the
development of multi-sided platforms: the digital ecosystem strategy of Alibaba.
com. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 16(4), p.2.
Tan, D. and Meyer, K.E. (2010) Business groups' outward FDI: A managerial resources
perspective. Journal of International Management, 16(2), pp.154-164.