BUS 101: Walmart Company's External Audit, Opportunities, and Threats

This report provides an external audit of Walmart, a global retail giant. It identifies key opportunities such as improved quality standards, technological advancements, and expansion into developing markets. Simultaneously, it highlights threats like intense competition, rising raw material costs, and changing consumer demands. The analysis incorporates Porter's model to evaluate Walmart's strategies, emphasizing innovation in goods and services and improvements in human resource practices to maintain a competitive edge. The findings reveal that while opportunities enhance profitability and market reach, threats necessitate strategic adaptations. The report concludes that Walmart's strategic use of Porter's model is crucial for navigating both domestic and international markets, ensuring sustainable business growth and competitive advantage.

Discussion of opportunities
and threats of Walmart
Company

1
Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Opportunities and threats of Morningstar, Inc., Company...........................................................................2
Company strategies by using Porter’s model...............................................................................................2
Summary of the findings.............................................................................................................................3
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................3
References...................................................................................................................................................4

2
Introduction
The paper aims to conduct an external audit of the Walmart Company that provides global retail
services to the people. The paper will discuss the opportunities and threats faced by the firm in
the market throughout the United States. In addition, the strategies used by the firm by following
Porter’s model, along with its finding, will also be further discussed in this context.
Opportunities and threats of Morningstar, Inc., Company
Opportunities Threats
 Improvement of quality standards
enhances the profitability
 Increases consumer base from several
online platforms
 Stable cash flow increases their
investment in product segments
 Technological development improve
marketing efforts (Peeroo, Samy &
Jones, 2016)
 Expansion in developing country
markets
 Low inflation rate increases the
market stability
 Government green drive enhances the
procurement of goods
 Low-interest rate enhances the
opportunity of business expansion
 Core competencies increase success
factors
 Skilled workers increase saving costs
 The demand for high-quality goods
and services
 Challenges in maintaining healthy
lifestyle in different country market
 Intense rate of competition
 The rising rate of raw material
 Presence of liability laws (Herhausen,
Binder, Schoegel & Herrmann, 2015)
 Various sizes online retailers
 Growing demands of local distributors
 The fluctuation of the exchange rate
 Presence of political uncertainties of
several countries
 Regulations and rules of international
trade
Company strategies by using Porter’s model

3
By using Porter's model, Walmart company uses several strategies to survive in both the US and
international markets. With the help of Porter's model, the firm analyzes the competitive forces
of the market and develops an appropriate strategy for it (Peeroo, Samy & Jones, 2016). One of
the strategies used by the firm is to innovate their goods and services as per the market needs,
and this enables them to grab consumer’s attraction. Furthermore, the firm strategizes to improve
their human resource practices for maintaining the competitive advantage in the market by which
they can enhance their business revenue by easily distribute their goods to every location in US
(Krotov, 2017).
Summary of the findings
From the opportunities and threats analysis, it is seen that the improvement of quality standards
provides huge benefits to the firm. It is seen that with the technological development and the
presence of skilled workers along with the stable cash flow increases the sales rate as well as the
consumer base for the organization. It is noticed that the presence of government’s green drive,
low inflation, and interest rate creates opportunities for the firm to expand its business in other
international markets (Peeroo, Samy & Jones, 2015). However, the demands of high-quality
goods, intense rate of competition, presence of liability laws, and regulations of international
trade creates huge threats for this firm. In order to overcome these threats, the firm innovated
their products as per the market needs and build an efficient supply chain procedure so that they
can overcome their weakness in both domestic and international markets.
Conclusion
The paper concludes that the opportunities of the Walmart firm increase their profitability rate
and consumer base on several countries, whereas the threats creates a negative impact on the
business procedure of the firm. In order to overcome their threats, they use strategies by using
Porter's model, which help them to handle their business threats.

4
References
Herhausen, D., Binder, J., Schoegel, M., & Herrmann, A. (2015). Integrating bricks with clicks:
retailer-level and channel-level outcomes of online–offline channel integration. Journal
of retailing, 91(2), 309-325.
Krotov, V. (2017). The Internet of Things and new business opportunities. Business
Horizons, 60(6), 831-841.
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).
Peeroo, S., Samy, M., & Jones, B. (2016, September). Generating Customer Engagement and
Customer Enragement on Facebook Pages of Tesco and Walmart. In Conference on e-
Business, e-Services and e-Society (pp. 146-156). Springer, Cham.