Strategic Analysis of Walmart: Resources and Capabilities

This report offers a comprehensive strategic analysis of Walmart, a global leader in the retail industry. It delves into the company's resources and capabilities, utilizing the VRIO framework to assess their value, rarity, imitability, and organization. The analysis covers key areas such as Walmart's training and development facilities, diversity management processes, strong business presence, and diversified service and product range. The report highlights how these factors contribute to Walmart's competitive advantage, enabling it to attract customers, retain employees, and achieve its vision of being the preferred destination for its customers. The conclusion emphasizes Walmart's strategic strengths, including its low pricing policy and ability to meet diverse customer demands, solidifying its position in the global market.

Running head: STRATEGIC PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT
Strategic Planning and Management
Name of the Student
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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Theoretical Spine:......................................................................................................................3
Resources and Capabilities:.......................................................................................................4
Training and Developmental Facilities:.................................................................................4
Diversity management process:.............................................................................................5
Business presence:.................................................................................................................5
Diversified services and product range:.................................................................................6
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................7
References:.................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction:
The selected organisation for the study is a global giant of the Retail Industry named
as Walmart. The study discusses regarding the resources and capabilities that organisation
utilizes, with the application of VRIO framework. The selected organisation was established
in the year 1962 (Walmart.com, 2020). The organisation was developed by an American
entrepreneur named as Samuel Walton (Walmart.com, 2020). The public listed company is
currently headquartered in Bentonville, United States. Some of the important names in the list
of the managerial position holders in the company, are Doug McMillon, the President and
CEO, Dan Bartlett, the Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Brett Biggs, the
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Walmart, John Furner, the President
and CEO, Walmart U.S., Marc Lore, the President and CEO, Walmart U.S. eCommerce,
Judith McKenna, the President and CEO, Walmart International, Kathryn McLay, the
President and CEO, Sam’s Club and Donna Morris, the Executive Vice President, Chief
People Officer, Walmart Inc. (Corporate.walmart.com., 2020).
The company is able to establish strong presence across the globe through opening
their store outlets at 11503 number of places (Walmart.com, 2020). The company offers wide
range of products such as electronics, clothing, footwear, jewellery, fitness goods, home and
furniture and most importantly grocery. In addition to this, the company offers services such
as Walmart money card, walmart.com, Walmart pay and other Financial Services. Walton
family is the current owner of the company and the company currently employs
approximately 2.2 million employees across the globe (Walmart.com, 2020). In the current
financial year, the company generated a sum of 523.964 billion US dollars as revenue and on
the other hand, the company's operating income is seen to be 20.568 billion US dollars
(Walmart.com, 2020). Considering the mission statement of the company, it is visible that the

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company is dedicated saving their customers' money so that they can live in a better manner
(Walmart.com, 2020). Along with that the vision statement of the company is pretty
significant in elaborating the urge of the senior management of Walmart in being the most
preferred destination for their customers in saving money irrespective of the ways in which
they want to shop (Walmart.com, 2020). In addition to this one of the primary objective of
the company is to become most desired company in the heart and mind of their employees
and clients.
Theoretical Spine:
The selected tool for the internal resource and capabilities investigation of Walmart is
VRIO framework. The framework is one of the investigation tools that is widely used by the
multinational companies. According to the comments of Ariyani and Daryanto (2018), the
VRIO framework helps the commercial business entities in evaluating the excellence of their
resources and capabilities. The framework is particularly divided into four different aspects
which are Valuable, Rare, Inimitable and Well organized (Knott, 2015). According to the
comments of Seo, Park and Choi (2016), the resources that allow a company in neutralizing a
business threat or in exploiting a business opportunity is considered to bd valuable for the
companies. On the other hand, the resources that are available for few companies, is to be
regarded as rare. Buzatu, Pleșea and Iulian (2019), stated that the resources that are costly for
other companies to imitate and the resources which are well exploited by the framed policies
and procedures of the company are recognized as Inimitable and Well organized. With a
close look at the framework, it is clear that the success of the companies in identifying the
excellence of the company resources play a significant role in developing their strategic plan.
As a result, the findings of the internal resource investigation with the application of VRIO
framework have the ability to influence the fate of the company in the long run.

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Resources and Capabilities:
Training and Developmental Facilities:
The training facilities of Walmart is recognized to be one of the best in the global
retail industry and that is pretty prominent with the introduction of Walmart Academies. With
Walmart Academies, the company is observed to be efficient in meeting the developmental
needs of their employees in a professional manner. The facilities of Walmart Academies is
substantial for the company in delivering sales floor training and classroom training in a
simultaneous manner (Corporate.walmart.com, 2020). With both forms of training, the
company is seen to provide a good scope to their employees for enhancing their technical
skills along with the soft skills such as leadership, management, business ethics and
communication (Corporate.walmart.com, 2020). Other than this, the company understood the
necessity of flexibility in their approach of training and that influenced them in developing a
game like Spark city which has the potential to meet the need if flexibility in educating the
employees regarding the retail skills (Corporate.walmart.com, 2020).
In association with Guild Foundation, the company is able to develop education
programme such as the Live Better U program which provides the scope to their employees
in accomplishing high quality debt free degrees in business and supply chain at a cost of 1
dollar per day (Corporate.walmart.com, 2020). The success of the company with such
training program is prominent with the high level of satisfaction of their customers and at the
same time, the preferences amongst the employees and executives of the company is visible
with participation of 450000 number of associates in the company (Corporate.walmart.com,
2020). Such substantial success of the company in their training management enabled the
company to develop new best seller and innovative products which makes the resource
valuable.

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Diversity management process:
As per the comments of De Jong, Dirks and Gillespie (2016), the major challenge for
the modern companies is seen to be the continuous enhancement of their team performances.
The enhancement of the team performances by the companies is largely dependent on their
ability in ensuring that the workforce has a good culture. The formation of the conflict
amongst the employees as a result of diversity or cultural orientations is certainly a menace
for the companies in improving their performances on the basis of quality and production. In
such situation, Walmart is able to develop an efficient diversity management process where
they had collaborated with organization such as African American Business Resource Group,
Asian Pacific Associate Network, Association for Disability Awareness and Education,
Hispanic Latino Associate Resource Group, PRIDE, Tribal Voices and Woman's Resource
Council (Careers.walmart.com, 2020).
The success of such strong association is visible with the placement at 100 in the
Disability Equality Index (Careers.walmart.com, 2020). Along with that, 43℅ of the Walmart
managers are women and that signifies the success of the diversity management practices
initiated by the company in breaking the glass ceiling (Careers.walmart.com, 2020). The
mentioned capability of the company is pretty rare in the global retail industry. The
development of such significant association amongst the organizations for a cause like
diversity management is rarely seen in today's world of business.
Business presence:
One of the important resources of the organisation is their strong store presence. The
organisation is able to spread their business across the globe and that is evident with their
strong presence in various nations with the establishment of approximately 11500 stores
(Walmart.com, 2020). The development of such strong store presence helps the company in a
significant manner in reaching out to their customers with diversified service and product

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offerings. The development of such significant store presence is possible only because of the
bulk funding from the part of the shareholders and owners of the company. As a result the
necessity of strong cash flow for developing such efficient store presence is observed to be
much required for the company. The development of the required infrastructure for
establishing such a large number of stores across the globe requires massive financial support
from the part of the shareholders of the company. As the development of such capabilities is
associated with a humongous financial support, the development of such capabilities is
certainly costly to imitate for other companies. As a result, Walmart's strong store presence
and success in establishing efficient infrastructure is certain capabilities that are difficult for
other retail organizations to imitate.
Diversified services and product range:
Considering the services that the company offers to their customers, the existence of
Walmart MoneyCard, Pickup Today, Walmart.com, Walmart Pay, Walmart-2-Walmart along
with financial services is notably visible (Walmart.com, 2020). On the other hand, the
product range of the company includes products of different genre such as the electronics,
grocery, movies and music, craft supplies, clothing, party supplies, home and furniture,
Sporting goods and fitness, Footwear, Pet supplies, Jewellery, and health products and toys
(Walmart.com, 2020). The diversified service and product range of the company enables the
company to meet the diverse demands of the customers in a professional manner. At the same
time, the mentioned capability enables the company in developing customer loyalty along
with increasing their sales. The mentioned capability is seen to be well utilized by the
company with the establishment of the low pricing policy, strong presence in the form of
physical stores along with online channels.

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Conclusion:
On an ending note, it is visible that the company is one of the largest retailer operating
across the globe. The company’s ability in applying the low pricing policy is contributing to
their capability in attracting new customers and in serving the existing customers in a
professional manner. The excellence of the capabilities of the company such as diversity
management process, strong store presence, training and developmental facilities and
diversified service and product offerings is seen to place the company in better position for
achieving their vision of becoming the most preferred destination of their customers and
employees.

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References:
Ariyani, W., & Daryanto, A. (2018). Operationalization of Internal Analysis Using the VRIO
Framework: Development of Scale for Resource and Capabilities Organization (Case
Study: XYZ Company Animal Feed Business Unit). Asian Business Research
Journal, 3, 9-14.
Knott, P. J. (2015). Does VRIO help managers evaluate a firm’s resources?. Management
Decision.
Buzatu, A. I., Pleșea, D. A., & Iulian, C. (2019). MANAGING ORGANIZATIONS FOR
SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT: INTERACTION BETWEEN VRIO
FRAMEWORK AND McKINSEY 7S FRAMEWORK. New Trends in Sustainable
Business and Consumption, 243.
Corporate.walmart.com (2020). Working at Walmart. Retrieved 21 March 2020, from
https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/working-at-walmart
De Jong, B. A., Dirks, K. T., & Gillespie, N. (2016). Trust and team performance: A meta-
analysis of main effects, moderators, and covariates. Journal of Applied Psychology,
101(8), 1134.
Careers.walmart.com (2020).Workplace Diversity and Inclusion | Walmart Careers.
Retrieved 21 March 2020, from https://careers.walmart.com/diversity-inclusion
Seo, B. G., Park, D. H., & Choi, D. (2016, August). Innovative service concept generation
based on integrated framework of design thinking and VRIO: the case of information
supporting system for SMEs in Korea. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual
International Conference on Electronic Commerce: e-Commerce in Smart connected
World (pp. 1-5).

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Corporate.walmart.com. (2020). Leadership. Retrieved 9 March 2020, from
https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/leadership
Walmart.com (2020). | Save Money. Live Better. Retrieved 9 March 2020, from
https://www.walmart.com/