Detailed Analysis of Walmart's Business Environment

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Walmart's business environment. It begins with an overview of Walmart's operations, including its global presence, financial performance, and core products and services. The report then delves into the company's external stakeholders, such as shareholders, customers, government regulatory authorities, and suppliers, assessing their influence and interests. Following this, the internal stakeholders, including employees, managers, and owners, are examined. Finally, the report identifies and discusses the major threats to Walmart's business environment, such as intense competition and challenges related to human resource management, including labor costs and unionization issues. The analysis highlights the dynamic nature of the retail industry and the challenges Walmart faces in maintaining its market position.

Running head: BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Business Environment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Topic 1:......................................................................................................................................2
Topic 2:......................................................................................................................................3
Topic 3:......................................................................................................................................4
Topic 4:......................................................................................................................................6
References:.................................................................................................................................7

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Topic 1:
The selected business organization in which I want to work is Walmart. The
organization is one of the market leaders of the global retail industry. As per the business
reports of the company, the organization has strong presence in 11503 number of locations in
the form of store outlets (Walmart.com, 2020). Considering the employees, the mentioned
business entity is currently employing approximately 2.2 million number of employees
(Stock.walmart.com, 2020). With a close consideration towards the financial characteristics
of the company, it is understandable that the organization is able to generate an amount of
523.964 billion US dollars as revenue at the end of 2019 and that shows that the company has
successfully increased their revenue (Stock.walmart.com, 2020). Having said that, the
operating income of the business entity is seen to be 20.568 billion US dollars which shows
that the operating income of the company has decreased from that of the previous year
(Stock.walmart.com, 2020). At the same time, the net income of the company is 14.881
billion US dollars and the total equity of the company is approximately 74.669 billion US
dollars (Stock.walmart.com, 2020). Other than this, the value of the total assets of the
company has increased to 236.495 billion US dollars (Stock.walmart.com, 2020).
The organization is observed to have good reputation of serving their customers
across the globe. There are four prominent divisions in the company which are Walmart US,
Walmart International, Sam’s Club and Global eCommerce (Walmart.com, 2020). The
Walmart US is the responsible division for managing the business actions of the company in
region of United States. On the other hand, the Walmart International is observed to spread
the business of the company across various nations such as Argentina, Australia India, Japan,
Central America, China, Chile, Mexico, Africa, Canada and United Kingdom
(Corporate.walmart.com, 2020). The organization operates in the intensely populated global

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retail industry and is able to achieve significant amount of success in the same. With a close
look at the core products of the company, it is evident that the company has the expertise of
selling wide range of products of different genres which include the electronics, clothing,
music and movies, furniture, jewellery, footwear, health and beauty goods, sports and fitness
goods, craft supplies, party supplies along with the most important section which is the
grocery (Walmart.com, 2020). Considering the services that the company offers to their
customers, the significance of Walmart-2-Walmart, Walmart Pay, Wlamart.com, Pickup
Today, Walmart MoneyCard and Financial services is observed to be notably high
(Corporate.walmart.com, 2020).
Topic 2:
With a detailed consideration towards the business actions of Walmart, it is
understandable that the company has considerable number of external stakeholders associated
with their business actions. With a close look at the business actions of the company, it is
visible that the major external stakeholders of the company are the shareholders, community,
government regulatory authorities, customers, suppliers. Considering the investor relations
documentation of the company, it is understandable that The Vanguard Group, Inc., SSgA
Funds Management, Inc., BlackRock Fund Advisors, Geode Capital Management LLC,
Fidelity Management & Research Co., Northern Trust Investments, Inc. are the major
investors of the companies (Investor.vanguard.com, 2020). The shareholders of the company
are observed to be responsible for the changes in the constitution of the company, declaration
of the dividend, approval of the financial statements of the company along with the
improvement of the company management through the voluntary liquidation (Norli,
Ostergaard and Schindele, 2015). As a result, the shareholders of the company have interest
and influence in the business actions that the company is managing which advocates for the
close management of them.

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On the other hand, the customers of the company is one of the important section of
their stakeholders. The customers are the responsible group for which the company designs
their products and services and the consumption of the products and services by the
mentioned groups ensures the sales of the company. As a result, the customers are observed
to be associated with low interest and high influence on the business. The company operates
across the globe and as a result, the customer base of the same, is seen to be distributed across
the world. As per the comments of Peeroo, Samy and Jones (2015), the success of majority of
the modern multinational organizations is largely dependent on their ability in developing the
customer communities. Walmart, being one of the market giant in the global retail industry, is
observed to experience tremendous success in introducing their new products and services
through appropriate utilization of the customer communities. As a result, the role of the
customer communities in the success of the company is seen to be immense. As a result, it is
understandable that the customer communities have low interest and high influence on the
business activities of the company.
Other than this, the national governmental authorities, responsible for the compliance
of the business actions of the company with the legislations, are also observed to have low
interest and high influence on the business activities of the company. The role of the suppliers
of Walmart such as Plug Power, Funai Electric Co., CCA Industries, Green Dot Corporation
and Primo Water Corporation is seen to be immense on the success of the company
(Plugpower.com (2020). However, the availability of substantial number of suppliers is one
of the main reason which highlights low influence and low interest of the groups.
Topic 3:
With a detailed consideration towards the business activities of Walmart, it is
understandable that five most important internal stakeholders of the company are the

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employees, technical departmental managers, human resource managers, subsidiary managers
along with owners. The owners of the company are Walton family and they supervise the
strategic decision making of the organization and at the same time, is responsible for the
funding activities of the organization. The influence of Walton family is considerably high
over the business and at the same time, being the owner of their business, their interest over
company is also high. Other than this, skills and expertise of 2.2 million employees of the
organization is one of the main resource of the company when it comes to serve their
customers and earn the desired profit (Walmart.com, 2020). The employees are seen to have
low power and a great share of interest in the business actions of the company.
Other than this, the human resource managers are also an important stakeholder group
for the company. It is understandable that the company has achieved significant success in
recent years in managing their human resources in perfect alignment for meeting their
business objectives and in such situation, their interest on the business activities of the
company is seen to be notably high. Having said that, the power or influence of the human
resource managers is low. Apart from the human resource managers, the technical department
managers are also an important stakeholder group responsible for the smooth management of
the business actions of the company (Cascio, 2015). The technical department managers,
being the first line of management for the employees and the respective point of contact for
the customers, have substantial amount of interest in the business actions of the company. On
the other hand, they do not experience the share of power that the higher authority has. The
business actions of Walmart are divided into four different subdivisions along with the
branches opened in various nations. The managers of the subdivisions along with the
branches manage their business actions of the companies at the global stage and they are
observed to have low power but higher level of interest.

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Topic 4:
Business environment and the possible threats:
With a close look at the business environment of the company, the major threat for the
company is the intense level of business competition offered by the competitor organizations.
The global organizations such as Amazon, Costco, Tesco, Target, Best Buy and ALDI are
observed to provide intense level of competition to Walmart (Costco.com, 2020). In spite of
applying low pricing, the company is seen to face a certain share of difficulty in penetrating
the global market and that is certainly a concern for the same in maintaining the financial
sustainability. Apart from that, one of the major challenge for the organization is the
increasing costing associated with their human resources. The company employs
approximately 2.2 million employees and is in need to continuously expand their workforce
for meeting the demands of the market. In such situation, the increment in the labour charge
will certainly be a point of concern for the same in earning larger revenue and in maintaining
a strong margin of profit (Heintz, 2019). In addition to this, the company has made certain
number of headlines with their inaccurate human resource management and their strong arm
tactics for supressing the unionization in American workplaces had certainly faced
considerable amount of criticism. As a result of the same, the company not only lost
productivity, faced employment strikes but also faced tremendous hit on their corporate
image (McVeigh, 2020).

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References:
Cascio, W. F. (2015). Managing human resources. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Corporate.walmart.com (2020). Our Business. Retrieved 12 March 2020, from
https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/our-business
Costco.com (2020). Home. Retrieved 22 March 2020, from https://www.costco.com/
Heintz, J. (2019). Global labor standards: Their impact and implementation. In The
Handbook of Globalisation, Third Edition. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Investor.vanguard.com. (2020). Mutual funds, IRAs, ETFs, 401(k) plans, and more |
Vanguard. (2020). Retrieved 18 March 2020, from
https://investor.vanguard.com/corporate-portal/
McVeigh, K. (2020). Walmart workers protest over minimum wage in 15 US cities.
Retrieved 22 March 2020, from
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/sep/05/walmart-workers-strike-us-
thursday
Norli, Ø., Ostergaard, C. and Schindele, I., 2015. Liquidity and shareholder activism. The
Review of Financial Studies, 28(2), pp.486-520.
Peeroo, S., Samy, M., & Jones, B. (2015, December). Customer engagement manifestations
on Facebook pages of Tesco and Walmart. In 2015 International conference on
computing, communication and security (ICCCS) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
Plugpower.com (2020). Home. Retrieved 18 March 2020, from https://www.plugpower.com/
Stock.walmart.com (2020). Walmart Investor Relations - Investors - Financial Information -
Annual Reports & Proxies. Retrieved 12 March 2020, from

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https://stock.walmart.com/investors/financial-information/annual-reports-and-
proxies/default.aspx
Walmart.com (2020). | Save Money. Live Better. Retrieved 12 March 2020, from
https://www.walmart.com/