Business Environment Analysis: Walmart - Assessment 2 Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Walmart's business environment, addressing the requirements of an assessment. It begins with an introduction to Walmart, its operations, and its position in the retail industry. The report then delves into the functional areas of Walmart, followed by an in-depth examination of both internal and external stakeholders, assessing their interests, levels of influence, and the implications of conflicting interests. Furthermore, the report includes a stakeholder matrix to visually represent the relationships and impact of various stakeholders on Walmart. The analysis extends to a comparison of Walmart with other industries, highlighting key differences and similarities. The report concludes with a summary of the findings and a list of references used throughout the analysis, providing a well-structured and insightful overview of Walmart's business operations and stakeholder management.

Running Head: BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT 0
Business environment
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BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT 1
Assessment 2 Topic 1
Answer. Walmart is an American multinational retail organization, which provides finished
goods to the consumers which are ready to use or consume. It is spread in different parts of the
world presently; Walmart is providing the goods and services more than 25 countries all around
world. The company holds several organizational functions like finance, human resource
management, marketing, operations, legal and IT. It is one of biggest retail business organization
in terms of its business size and financial status. Walmart serves consumer goods to people,
which are obligatory and are part of daily life routine. This industry serves consumer goods to
the people that are frequently used by them (Obeng, 2019). More than 2.2 million people in
worldwide market are working for Walmart under which most of the people are placed in United
States and left are working at different locations of the world. Walmart tries to accomplish the
concerns of the employees as they have millions of workers ,it is essential for the company to
motivate the employees in order to achieve the targets and objectives of the company(Frynas, &
Mellahi, 2015). The company generated revenue of about US$6.67 billion in the year 2019.
Along with this, Walmart earned around $120.824 billion in the international market. Therefore,
it can be stated that the company is performing efficiently in American and international markets
(Le, Stathopoulos, Van Woensel, & Ukkusuri, 2019). Walmart provides consumer goods related
to home care like glass cleaner, brooms, coffee makers; it offers health and personal care
products like trimmers, razors, nutrition powder and hair colors and also delivers entertainment
goods to the people like soft toys for kids and brain games for adults. The core product offered
by Walmart are dairy products and pillows.
Assessment 2 Topic 2
Answer. An external stakeholder refers to a person or group of people who are not a part of
organization but are influenced by the actions and activities performed by company. There have
indirect nature of impact over the organization. The external stakeholders hold secondary
responsibility towards the company. Walmart holds five major external stakeholders consumers,
suppliers, competitors, investors and government. All these stakeholders have a different
interests and influences over Walmart.

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Consumers- Consumers are rational; they wish to have best quality of product at minimal rates.
Consumers also influence the business of Walmart in different ways for instance by switching to
some other organization, which offers similar products (Silvestre, Monteiro, Viana, & de Sousa-
Filho, 2018).
Suppliers- Suppliers of Walmart are comparatively less powerful; there core interest is to get
more powers in terms of making negotiations with the company. They do not influence the
company at extreme level because of the availability of numerous suppliers. Hence, Walmart
tries to maintain long-term relations with the suppliers (Epstein, 2018)..
Competitors- They are strongly influenced by the decisions of Walmart. The constant increase of
competitors in the market place has posed a threat to the earnings of Walmart. The major interest
of competitors relies in making higher profits than other firms (Harrison, 2019).
Society- Society is a strong external stakeholder which influences the business organization in
different ways. For instance change in the taste preference, wants and needs of the consumers in
society forces the organizations like Walmart to bring changes in their products and services.
The only interest of society relies in getting best services at least costs.
Government- As Walmart is working in numerous nations worldwide, it is the duty of Walmart
to follow the legal intellectual property rights formulated within specific country. The
government does not directly influence the functioning of organization rather it influences it by
implementing rules and regulation in respect to the quality of goods and services offered to
people (Harrison, 2019)
Assessment 2 Topic 3
Answer. Just like external stakeholders, internal stakeholders also influence Walmart. Internal
stakeholders are the individuals or group of individuals who are part of organization. They have
direct nature of impact. The internal stakeholders have primary responsibility towards the
company. The internal stakeholder serves the organization. There are five key internal
stakeholders i.e. the employees, the board of directors, mangers, owners and investors.
Employees- The employees act as backbone of the Walmart. They are the one whose hardships
help the company to perform in the market. The employees hold a simple interest in company i.e.

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to get job security and equal level of profit sharing. The employees can influence the production
of Walmart as the revenue generated by the company depends upon the productivity of the
employees (Kull, Mena, & Korschun, 2016).
The board of directors (BOD) - It is duty of the BOD to appoint Chief Executive Officer of the
company and all other employees working in Walmart. The BOD can make regulations in the
policies and plans of the company as and when required. The BOD holds sole interest in
increasing the productivity and output generated by the firm.
Managers- Managers leaves a most direct influence over the employees of the company. They
keep the employees under control and protect the business by antedating and performing in
contradiction of any threats to its welfare. A manager focuses on aligning the works of different
departments of Walmart to achieve its business objectives.
Owners- Owners of the company have strong and direct influence over the organization. Main
interest of owners of company is to earn maximum profits with optimum utilization of resources.
There can be more than one owner of Walmart, which means that there is numerous number of
people who invest in business. If any one of them withdraws money from organization, it
influences the productivity as well as the repo of Walmart(Clark, Feiner, & Viehs, 2015).
Investors- The investors are people who capitalize their wealth and saving in an organization for
helping the company to operate/produce and provide services. Therefore, the investors hold
major power of influencing the decision making process of Walmart. Investors can influence the
company by withdrawing or investing money from the company shares.
Assessment 2 Topic 4
Answer. Walmart is a multinational business organization, which functions in an extremely
competitive environment. As Walmart belongs to the retail sector, it is common to face
competition. Walmart is required to develop strategies to defeat the competitors. The company
offers thousands of products which are derived from the culture and taste of more than 100
nations across the globe, therefore it can be stated that Walmart deals in national as well as the
international markets (Martínez, Galván, & Alam, 2017).. Walmart faces major threat of
increasing level of competitors. The increasing competition makes san influence on the quality

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quantity and the prices of products. There are number of organizations who offers substitute of
the goods offered by Walmart. Let us see some of the impact of increasing level of competition
on Walmart-
Quality of good- The increasing competition may lead to increase in the grade of quality of
services and goods provided to the consumer. Firms like Walmart make efforts to provide best
quality of goods to the consumer, to ensure that the consumer should face maximum level of
satisfaction.
Quantity of good- The quantity of the product may increase as the firms will focus on maintain
the number of consumers and also attracting new consumers towards Walmart. Walmart seeks
interest in gaining highest number of profits in comparison of other firms.
Price of good – As the competition increases it is possible that the prices of product will fall and
consumers will be able to purchase goods at cheap rates.
Reduction in the total revenue- Due to increasing competition it is possible that Walmart will
have to bear losses. The existence of rivalry firms can distribute the sales. Hence the total
revenue of Walmart will definitely decrease (Kim, & Peterson, 2017).

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Bibliography
Harrison, V. (2019). Legitimizing private legal systems through CSR communication: a Walmart
case study. Corporate Communications: An International Journal.
Obeng, E. (2019). Bullseye: An argument for effectively managing retail stakeholder
relationships. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 49, 327-335.
Le, T. V., Stathopoulos, A., Van Woensel, T., & Ukkusuri, S. V. (2019). Supply, demand,
operations, and management of crowd-shipping services: A review and empirical
evidence. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 103, 83-103.
Frynas, J. G., & Mellahi, K. (2015). Global strategic management. Oxford University Press,
USA.
Silvestre, B. S., Monteiro, M. S., Viana, F. L. E., & de Sousa-Filho, J. M. (2018). Challenges for
sustainable supply chain management: When stakeholder collaboration becomes conducive to
corruption. Journal of cleaner production, 194, 766-776.
Epstein, M. J. (2018). Making sustainability work: Best practices in managing and measuring
corporate social, environmental and economic impacts. Routledge.
Clark, G. L., Feiner, A., & Viehs, M. (2015). From the stockholder to the stakeholder: How
sustainability can drive financial outperformance. Available at SSRN 2508281.
Kim, Y., & Peterson, R. A. (2017). A Meta-analysis of Online Trust Relationships in E-
commerce. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 38, 44-54.
Kull, A. J., Mena, J. A., & Korschun, D. (2016). A resource-based view of stakeholder
marketing. Journal of Business Research, 69(12), 5553-5560.
Martínez, A. B., Galván, R. S., & Alam, S. (2017). Financial Analysis of Retail Business
Organization: A Case of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Nile Journal of Business and Economics, 3(5),
67-89.

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