Walmart Business Report: Strategies and Recommendations

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Walmart's organizational strategies and business model. It begins with an executive summary highlighting the company's focus on low pricing, quality products, and a wide assortment. The report delves into Walmart's vision, mission, and core values, outlining its strategic initiatives, including technological adaptation for competitive advantage. Key areas covered include organizational strategies, operational plans, marketing strategies, product development, and innovation plans. The discussion explores Walmart's supply chain management, marketing objectives, and marketing mix. The report presents recommendations for maintaining market leadership, such as expanding private label brands and leveraging both online and offline channels. The conclusion summarizes the main points, offering a holistic view of Walmart's current strategies and proposed improvements. The report also includes an outline of business functional processes, covering operations, supply chain management, marketing, product development, innovation, and growth strategies. The report provides an overview of Walmart's external environment, including a PESTLE analysis.

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Executive Summary:
The purpose of the report is to demonstrate the organizational strategies and business model
of Walmart. The paper reflected the vision and mission of the organization, which is mainly
based on three constituents, lower pricing, good quality and wider assortment. The
operational plan of Walmart is focussed on sustainability approach. The paper demonstrated
the strategy of including technological adaptation for competition with competitors such as
Target and Amazon. The paper presented little recommendation for stimulating and
maintaining the market leadership position. The recommendations includes, increasing
private label brands and striking balance between existing brands as well as expanding
market by both online and offline channel for competing with Amazon. The paper concluded
by summarizing main points of the report.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Organizational strategies:.......................................................................................................3
Vision statement-...............................................................................................................4
Mission statement-.............................................................................................................4
Core values of Walmart:....................................................................................................5
Walmart core and current organizational strategies:..........................................................5
Outline of Business functional processes:..............................................................................8
Operations or supply chain management-..........................................................................8
Marketing plan-..................................................................................................................8
Product development plan-................................................................................................9
Innovation plan or strategies-.............................................................................................9
Growth strategy:...............................................................................................................10
Strategic implementation of change management:..........................................................10
Recommendations....................................................................................................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
The collaboration of company’s actions with the purpose of accomplishing long-term
objectives is known as organizational strategy. Structured initiatives and actions comprises of
strategic plan in organizations. For the purpose of executing the planned strategies in
organization, the initiatives and participation of the employees are very important. Business
model can be defined as foundation on which organizations constructs, delivers and
establishes values in the social, economic and cultural aspect. Procedure involved in forming
and modifying business model is also known as business model innovation. The business
model of an organization includes core functional areas like, objectives, offerings,
infrastructure, operational and marketing plan and strategies. Organizational strategies are
solely dependent on the planned procedures involved within the organisational business
model for the purpose of accomplishing desired vision and objectives. The purpose of the
report is to demonstrate organizational strategies with the implication of business model for
the organization, Walmart. The report will discuss about the operational strategies and plans
of Walmart with the association of marketing plan. In the paper, the data regarding the
product development strategies, innovation strategies, implementation plan and growth
strategies will be presented. The paper will present recommendations in alignment with the
improvement strategies for Walmart. The paper will be concluded by presenting a summary
regarding the existing strategies and model of Walmart along with the proposed
recommendations.
Discussion
Organizational strategies:
The founder of the organization, Walmart once depicted the secret regarding the
accomplishment of a successful retailing system, which is solely concentrated on the aspect

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of what customers actually wants. The expectation from an ideal retailing system includes,
wide range of products with good quality, guaranteed satisfaction, lowest prices, friendly and
knowledgeable staff, free parking, pleasant experience in store or online and convenient
hours in physical stores (Corporate.walmart.com 2019). Complete picture of organizational
strategies of Walmart is positioned based on the changing customer needs and desires from a
retail brand. With the increasing advancement of technology, Walmart have responded to the
needs by expanding its reach from the physical stores to digital existence.
Vision statement-
 The main vision of the organization, Walmart is to sell quality products in low prices
with the association of opportunities for growing and responsible manufacturing by
incorporating business excellence in each functional area of organization.
(Corporate.walmart.com 2019)
 Vision of Walmart is also to make life of families (busy) easier as they are main target
group of Walmart.
 The business strategy and vision of Walmart is completely dependent upon key
elements such as perfecting fundamentals and innovating the future.
Mission statement-
 The mission of Walmart is to enhance the quality and values of existence for people
across the globe by offering wide assortments, affordable price and better experience.
 The mission mainly revolves around the purpose of addressing the needs of people by
helping them with saving money and living a better life, anytime and anywhere by the
implication of ecommerce and physical retail stores (Corporate.walmart.com 2019)
 The core business model of Walmart has always been the same but has constantly
changed the business strategies with changing business environment.
 The three key dimension of Walmart involves, experience, price and assortment.

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 The mission of the organization have experienced changes over the year by
incorporating transformation in accordance with the changing external business
environment, e-commerce site of Walmart was never a part of the core model but
have been launched for increasing the convenience and reach for the target customer
groups.
Core values of Walmart:
The culture of the organizational forms the foundation for core values. By the action
of delivering effective customer service and creating efficient, well-aware front-line
employees, it can enhance the steps towards common goal of offering affordable prices with
better life.
The core values and beliefs of the organization is to offer efficient and effective services
for the customer, respecting internal and external stakeholders and striving business
excellence. The principles, beliefs and core values have shaped the organizational culture of
Walmart. The organization is also attempting at eliminating geographical boundaries with the
existent values. The list of the core values and beliefs are as follows:
 Offering effective and efficient services to customers
 Developing mutual understanding and respect for internal and external stakeholders.
 Striving towards business excellence by incorporating integrity, honesty, fairness,
ethics and objective guide in the workplace of Walmart.
 Acting or performing with ethics and integrity
Walmart core and current organizational strategies:
The strategies of Walmart are based upon the process of ensuring the leadership
position in the retail industry. The project impact of Walmart is dependent on various

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strategic initiatives for the purpose of improving the offerings and customer experience. The
strategic initiatives are as follows:
1. Saving money by living better-
 Consumables: The organization is in the process of changing the promotional
campaigns, in-store signage and the seasonal advertisements.
 Price leadership: Walmart is known for the strategy of ‘everyday low prices’
with improving quality in each product segment. Price leadership also enables
the company to respond to the increasing competition from the companies
such as Target.
 Integration of private labels: The area that can be used for increasing revenue
inflow of Walmart is the strategy of expanding to private label segment.
Private levels will eliminate the obligation of assigning a profit margin to
other big brands in the store, thereby increasing the level of profit
(Walmart.com 2019).
 Integrating brand communication: Walmart is planning to minimize the
overall suppliers, but the organization will enhance the selected vendors to
stimulate more co-branded promotional campaigns.
 Leveraging selling administrative and general expenses: Walmart is planning
to increase the efficiency of supplier transportation by improving distribution
centres to stores and within stores.
2. Win-Play-Show-
 Win: With the strategy of introducing the private label product segments, the
company thrives at gaining and maintaining the leadership position in regards
with price, quality, customer service excellence and wide assortment of
product offerings.

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 Play: Walmart adopted the strategy of increasing the product categories in
stores by establishing a balance profit and growth in terms of private and other
brands’ products.
 Show: The organization have decided on removing the less significant or less
selling brands from the store shelves or from online stores for enhancing the
profit. For instance, the organization has removed two brands of plastic food
storage from four. Clorox’s Glad and Pactiv Corp’s Hefty are being removed
by Walmart and leaving private label brand and SC Johnson’s Ziploc bag.
3. Fast-friendly and clean-
 Zero waste facilities: The aspect of sustainability is considered as the main
component of Walmart’s green policies. The sustainable approaches are not
limited to the efficiency on the stage of producing raw materials but are also
majorly concentrated on the manufacturing processes for private level brand,
on the process of supplier to the distribution centre, on distribution centre to
the stores, from stockrooms to shelf and from shelves to customer (Tabesh,
Mousavidin and Hasani 2019). The approach is also focussed on the after sales
activities by encouraging customers to practice sustainable approach on
dumping product wastes for the target of zero waste strategy.
 Merchandise flow: The replenishment cycle of Walmart is focussed on
efficiency by not stretching above 48 hours. The strategies for efficient
merchandise flow are cross-docking that helps in reducing the level of
inventory levels, minimizing insignificant storage and handling of products
and reducing operating cost.

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Outline of Business functional processes:
Operations or supply chain management-
Walmart is extensively working towards the purpose of transforming the supply chain
process, especially transportation (Pagell, and Wu 2017). The complete operational plan is
dedicated towards the goal of sustainability, efficiency, cost effectiveness and attractive final
price. The company have already reduced the fuel consumption by marking the improvement
in the aspect of fuel efficiency by 21 percent in respect of Miles per Gallon. Walmart
achieved the goal of increasing the efficiency by increasing the number of pallets in a single
truck by 5.5 percent (Smith and Crawford 2019). The strategy impacted by reducing the rate
of empty truck miles by around 6.5 percent and experienced an improvement in increasing
around 3.8 percent in cases that were shipped with a reduction of around 7.8 percent per mile.
Marketing plan-
Current state: Walmart is a well-known organization for selling an extensive range of
product offerings at affordable price ranges. Every week, around 245 million customers visits
in the Walmart stores, which is more than 10,800 existent in 27 countries and offering
product ranges from e-commerce website, present in ten countries. The organization has
above 2.2 million employees across the globe. The company is known for its sustainability
approach, core values and innovative strategies (Bushnell et al. 2015).
Issue assessment and competitors: Walmart experiences competition from various forms of
retail businesses. One of the biggest segments of competition of Walmart includes individual
retail shops selling products like household items, electronics and groceries. Other set of
major competitors is the huge retail brands such as Target, Costco and Amazon (in e-
commerce) (Marimuthu et al. 2019). The organization is facing challenges due to the
increasing rate of employee attrition, increasing competition with reducing scope of earning
market share and the increasing concern of climate change and negative environmental

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impact from customers groups to organization results in the exertion of pressure on Walmart
for hundred percent sustainability practices.
Marketing objectives: The marketing objectives of Walmart include the plan for improving
price, product offerings and accessibility of products in the store and value proposition of the
offerings.
Marketing mix: The main product offering of Walmart is the retail service. The retail
business is service-dominated product. Walmart includes numerous brands with private label
product ranges in most segments. Customers are influenced by offering valuable services,
wide ranged product lines in affordable prices. The core strategy for Walamart’s pricing is
‘Everyday Low Pricing’, which is advertised in the stores (Avery 2018). The organization
follows cost leadership strategy by maintaining the low price with low operational cost.
Walmart use the medium of newspaper, websites, and co-branding communication through
the technique of sales promotion in form of deals and discounts. Walmart adheres to intensive
distribution strategy (Romero-Hernandez et al. 2018).
Product development plan-
Walmart is concentrated on introducing new product line of private level brand in every
segment. The main purpose of this strategy is to decrease the operational cost and to ensure
quality consistency of the retail stores.
Innovation plan or strategies-
The innovation plan or strategies includes:
 Continuous improvement process by adapting to transforming retail landscape.
 Enhancing the application and features of the e-commerce segment for increasing
complete customer experience (Casadesus-Masanell, Van den Steen and Elterman
2018)

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 Along with the association of e-commerce sites, in-store experience is also enhanced
for the best of both worlds.
 Omni-channel effectiveness by strong position
Growth strategy:
Walmart follows product development strategy by increasing services through adding
convenience and private label brands. It is also following market penetration strategy by
lower price (Forkner et al. 2018). Market development strategy is also followed by expanding
reach for competing with Target, Amazon and Costco.
Strategic implementation of change management:
The change management is Walmart was needed for incorporating multi-channel distribution
strategy. Another purpose of implementing change plan is to transform the retailing system
with the incorporation of technological implications (Grayson, Coulter and Lee 2018)
Recommendations
 Opportunity of expanding the brand globally through both channel of distribution for
competing with Amazon.
 Opportunity of decreasing the operational cost and maintaining the low price by the
incorporation of private label brands.
 Opportunity of addressing competition by enhancing the value of differentiation
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded form the paper that although Walmart is a huge name in the
retail industry with the cost benefit, wide range product portfolio and wider reach through
Omni-channel strategy but the organization needs to develop a point of differentiation and
needs to introduce more private label brands for decreasing operational cost and lower price

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range. The company needs to incorporate continual process of technology implication by also
being socially and environmentally responsible.

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References:
Avery, G.C., 2018. Positioning the business for a sustainable future. Strategy &
Leadership, 46(6), pp.52-53.
Bushnell, N., Drucker, P.F., Abell, D.F. and Hammond, J.S., 2015. Business Planning and
Market Strategy in a Nutshell.
Casadesus-Masanell, R., Van den Steen, E. and Elterman, K., 2018. The Rise and Rise (?) of
Walmart (A): Battling Kmart.
Corporate.walmart.com 2019. Corporate - US. Homepage. [Online] Available
at: https://corporate.walmart.com
Forkner, E., Jenkins, M., McCartney, T. and Padgett, S., 2018. MU Grocery Delivery
Business Plan.
Grayson, D., Coulter, C. and Lee, M., 2018. All in: The Future of Business Leadership.
Routledge.
Marimuthu, R., Gopal, R. and Namperumal, N., Walmart Apollo, LLC, 2019. Customer
analytics data model. U.S. Patent Application 14/214,233.
Pagell, M. and Wu, Z., 2017. Business implications of sustainability practices in supply
chains. In Sustainable Supply Chains (pp. 339-353). Springer, Cham.
Romero-Hernandez, O., Hirsch, D., Romero, S. and Beckman, S., 2018. Business models and
organizational strategies. Energy Efficient Manufacturing: Theory and Applications, pp.401-
419.
Smith, N.C. and Crawford, R.J., 2019. Walmart: love, earth (A). In Managing Sustainable
Business (pp. 243-267). Springer, Dordrecht.

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Tabesh, P., Mousavidin, E. and Hasani, S., 2019. Implementing big data strategies: A
managerial perspective. Business Horizons, 62(3), pp.347-358.
Walmart.com 2019. Walmart.com | Save Money. Live Better.. [online]
Available at: https://www.walmart.com