BUS 300: Walmart Stores Business Strategy and Financial Objectives

This report provides an overview of Walmart's business strategy, examining its vision and mission statements, which emphasize affordability, convenience, and customer focus. The analysis includes Walmart's strategic and financial objectives, highlighting strategies to increase online sales, achieve low costs, and expand globally. The report also delves into Walmart's core values, such as customer-first and innovation, which are crucial for its success. Furthermore, it identifies key sustainable competitive advantages like brand positioning, value propositions, innovation, and customer acquisition. The report references key sources to support the analysis of Walmart's operations within the retail industry and its strategic approach to maintaining its market leadership.

Running head: WALMART STORES BUSINESS STRATEGY
Walmart Stores Business Strategy
Name
Institution

WALMART STORES BUSINESS STRATEGY 2
Overview
Walmart Stores is a publicly-traded company with its headquarters in Bentonville, US.
The company was founded in 1962 and has its presence in over one hundred countries across
the globe. Walmart deals operate in the retailer industry in consumer products, pharmacy,
wireless, and financial services. The store is one retailer globally in terms of employment and
market capitalization (Walmart, 2019). The company has employed over 2.2 million people
in four divisions namely: Walmart US., Global eCommerce, Sam’s Club and Walmart
international. Likewise, Walmart’s market capitalization is US$340.9 billion. Walmart faces
intense competition from Target, Costco, Lowe’s, Kroger, and Amazon.
Walmart’s vision and mission statements
Vision statement: “Be the destination for customers to save money, no matter how they want
to shop.”
Mission Statement: “To save people money so they can live better.”
A vision statement establishes the long term objectives for a company. Walmart's
vision statement helps the company to identify itself as customers’ preferred shopping
destination. The vision statements meet all the merits of a vision statement, as outlined in
Table 2.1. Walmart’s vision statement stipulates its desire to be a market leader based on
components of affordability, convenience, and customer-oriented (Kirkpatrick, 2017). The
company understands how cost impact customers purchasing power. The concept of
affordability is used to communicate product pricing in its stores compared to other stores.
Walmart seeks to provide convinces to its customers by providing products that meet all their
needs and preferences. Moreover, the statement is short, precise and memorable to customers
(David & David, 2014).

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Walmart strategic and Financial objectives
Strategies Type of strategy
To increase the sales volume from the online market
segment
Strategic objective
To become a leader in low cost by applying operational
efficiencies by providing products at significantly lower
prices compared to competitors.
Financial strategy
To penetrate and dominate the global retail market Strategic Objective
To increase sales by focusing on exisitng stores and
investing more in the e-commerce segment.
Financial objective
Walmart’s core values, management, and sustainable competitive strategies
Walmart’s core values are in line with its vision and mission statements. The core values are;
a) Customer-first
b) Listen
c) Innovative
d) Frontline focused
e) High performance
f) Inclusive
g) Accountable
h) Fairness
i) And, honesty.
The core values are realistic because they emphasize how essential customers are to
Walmart. The company portrays traits of flexibility and adaptability as a means of
maintaining its superiority in delivering customer services (Pace, 2017).
Lastly, visionary leadership has played an integral role in Walmart’s success. The
president and CEO of Walmart, Doug McMillon, has succeeded in effectively managing the

WALMART STORES BUSINESS STRATEGY 4
company resources and workforce (Walmart, 2019). Moreover, the success of Walmart has
based five main sustainable factors. First, positioning its products in the consumers’ minds.
Secondly, value propositions through customer-centric and low costs. Thirdly, ability to
innovate. Fourthly, ability to turn potential consumers into active buyers. Fifthly, an internal
culture that has consistently enhanced Walmart as a leading brand (Davidson, 2002).

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References
David, M. E., & David, F. R. (2014). Mission statement theory and practice: A content
analysis and new direction. International Journal of Business, Marketing, & Decision
Science, 95-110.
Davidson, H. (2002). The Committed Enterprise. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.
Kirkpatrick, S. (2017). Toward a grounded theory: A qualitative study of vision statement
development. Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 18 (1),87-101.
Pace, S. (2017). Shaping corporate brands: From product features to corporate mission.
International Studies of Management & Organization, 47 (2), 197-205.
Walmart. (2019, October 22). Walmart: Our Story. Retrieved from Walmart:
https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story