Strategic Management Report: Walmart's Corporate Level Strategies

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Walmart's corporate-level strategies. It begins with an executive summary outlining the focus on growth strategies, particularly in expanding its global presence. The report identifies Walmart's use of joint ventures, acquisitions, and mergers as key tactics. It evaluates the effectiveness of these strategies, considering market leadership, competition from national and e-commerce players like Amazon, and the need for growth to sustain revenue. The report also highlights gaps, such as declining market share in the United States, and recommends a balanced approach, including stability strategies in the US and renewal strategies in underperforming international markets. The report emphasizes the importance of identifying external factors, as evidenced by Walmart's challenges in Germany, and concludes that while current strategies are suitable, adjustments are needed for long-term success.

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Strategic management
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Executive summary
The aim of this report is to discuss about the corporate level strategies being followed by
Walmart in their business operation. It is identified that they are following growth strategies in
expanding their business across the world. In addition, this report also identified a few gap areas
in the current strategic intent of Walmart and accordingly some alternative strategies are being
discussed for their long term effectiveness.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Identification of the strategies.........................................................................................................3
Evaluation of the current strategies.................................................................................................4
Recommended strategies.................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
Reference.........................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Corporate level strategies are important for the business organizations in enhancing their
long term business sustainability. Moreover, in the current time, high level of competition in the
market is further increasing the importance for operational level strategies. However, different
organizations initiate different types of strategies based on their business situations. Walmart is
the leading retail brand in the world with having their presence in number of countries and
serving millions of customers (Akwetey, 2015). They are operating in one of the most
competitive business sectors in the world with the presence of good number of competitors.
Therefore, they are initiating a number of corporate level strategies according to their business
requirements.
This report will discuss about the corporate level strategies being initiated by Walmart in
the recent time along with their suitability in the business scenario. A few gap areas will be
identified and in accordance to these gap areas, a few recommended strategies will be discussed
in this report. These strategies can further help Walmart in enhancing their business
effectiveness.
Identification of the strategies
It is identified that Walmart had implemented different elements of growth strategies in
their business operation. This is due to the reason that the three major available corporate level
strategies are growth, stability and renewal. Walmart is not having the requirement for renewal
strategy as they are not facing any business issues. On the other hand, Walmart is in the spree of
expanding their business in different markets, which denotes that they are following growth
strategies (Capello, Caragliu & Fratesi, 2015). It is identified that in terms of the growth

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strategies, Walmart is following different tactics such as initiating joint venture, acquisition and
mergers to increase their business area. It should also be noted that Walmart was fist started in
the United States and from there they are have became leading retail name in the world, which
refers to their growth strategic approach. For instance, Walmart acquires the majority stake in the
Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart in expanding in the Indian market. They have also acquired
Art.com. On the other hand, Eko and Walmart are having joint ventures. These strategies are
helping them in expanding in different sectors and increasing their revenue (Hammer et al.,
2017).
Evaluation of the current strategies
In the current business scenario, the growth strategies being initiated by Walmart are
suitable for their operation. This is due to the reason that among the three available corporate
level strategies, only the growth approach can helps the business organizations in increasing their
operation. According to Joseph and Kuby (2015), Walmart is still enjoying the market leadership
in majority of their existing market but still their profitability and revenue are getting reduced
due to the emergence of new competitors in the market. In addition, it is also being stated by the
authors that in the recent time, national players from different countries are entering the foreign
markets and posing more challenges for Walmart. Thus, as per these views of the authors,
initiation of growth strategies is helping Walmart in increasing their market coverage area across
the world and fending off the competition to some extent. The more will be the market growth
and expansion, the more will be the revenue and sales volume of Walmart.
On the other hand, it is stated by Nhundu et al. (2017) that Walmart is not having other
options apart from the growth strategy to follow. This is due to the reason that renewal strategy is

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not applicable for the profitable business like Walmart. Initiation of the stability strategy is also
not applicable due to the reason that major market for them is the United States and stability
strategy will also not be able to retain the current customer base for Walmart. This is due to the
reason that United States is already having scores of retail brands operating. Thus, according to
the authors, growth strategy is the only available option for Walmart in expanding their business
beyond the United States and not getting restricted in a particular market.
Zentes, Morschett and Schramm-Klein (2017) stated that emergence of the e-commerce
is one of the major threats for the traditional retail brands such as Walmart. In this case, in the
market of the United States, Walmart is facing the biggest challenge in the form of Amazon.
However, on the other hand, Walmart is not having the required expertise in operating in the e-
commerce segment and thus they cannot initiate their own online business to counter Amazon.
Thus, as per the authors, Walmart is left only with the options of entering joint venture or
acquiring other e-commerce firms to expand their growth in the online sector also. Thus, it can
be stated that based on the views given by these authors, the current growth strategies being
initiated by Walmart are suitable and effective in enhancing their business opportunities.
Recommended strategies
Even though the current corporate level strategies are well effective for Walmat in their
long term business planning but there are certain gaps identified. One of the major gaps is the
rapid loss of the market share in the United States. This is due to the fact that Walmart is losing
their market share to the Target in the offline segment and to Amazon in the online segment.
With Walmart focusing more on their growth strategies in expanding in the foreign countries,
their home market is getting affected. Thus, it is recommended that apart from the growth

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strategy they are following in the global market, Walmart should also follow stability strategy in
the United States. It should be noted that the retail market of the United States is already
saturated and there is less scope for further growth. Thus, it is important for Walmart to maintain
their existing market share by the help of the stability strategy.
On the other hand, it is also identified that Walmart is not making profit in all the foreign
markets they are operating such as in South Korea, United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. In
these countries, they are facing continuous losses and in this case, they should follow the renewal
strategy. This is due to the reason that incurring losses for more time is only affecting the
financial condition of Walmart and initiation of retrenchment policies will help in cutting these
losses. It is reported that Walmart is selling their ASDA brand after incurring losses. Similarly,
they are facing loss in Japan and thus it is recommended that renewal strategy should also be
maintained to cut off the loss and focusing more on the profitable ventures. It is also being
recommended in the growth strategies being initiated by Walmart, identification of the external
factors is important. This is due to the reason that in Germany, Walmart faced challenged by not
being able to sell at lower price than the standard price, which is not allowed in the country. This
caused failure of their operation in Germany and they should have identified these factors prior
to the entry in the country.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that current corporate level strategies being followed by
Walmart are effective and suitable in line to their business environment. This report discussed
about the effectiveness of their current growth strategies and how they are helping Walmart in
gaining competitiveness in the global market. This report also identified a few gap areas in the

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current strategic intent of Walmart and in accordance to these gap areas, alternative strategies are
being discussed. These will help them in improving their effectiveness in the long term.

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Reference
Akwetey, L. M. (2015). Global Business Ventures, Foreign Direct Investment, Expansion, and
Growth Strategies. In Global Enterprise Management (pp. 19-37). Palgrave Macmillan,
New York.
Capello, R., Caragliu, A., & Fratesi, U. (2015). Global trends and the economic crisis: Future
alternative European growth strategies. Technological Forecasting and Social Change,
98, 120-136.
Hammer, B., Knauer, A., Pflücke, M., & Schwetzler, B. (2017). Inorganic growth strategies and
the evolution of the private equity business model. Journal of Corporate Finance, 45, 31-
63.
Joseph, L., & Kuby, M. (2015). Modeling retail chain expansion and maturity through wave
analysis: Theory and application to Walmart and Target. International Journal of Applied
Geospatial Research (IJAGR), 6(4), 1-26.
Nhundu, N., Paelo, A., Thosago, M., & Vilakazi, T. (2017). Growth and strategies of large and
leading firms–Food production and processing sector assessment. Centre for
Competition, Regulation and Economic Development Working Paper, 10, 2017.
Zentes, J., Morschett, D., & Schramm-Klein, H. (2017). Growth Strategies. In Strategic Retail
Management (pp. 141-161). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.