...Operation Management The process strategy that is applied at Wal-Mart Wal-Mart, a premier Grocery store and the largest chain store in the USA has been constantly striving to improve its product design. In the design of a consumer product not only is the manufactured cost of interest, but also the quality of the product delivered and how well the product meets customer expectations is studied. Wal-Mart has there own brand name (Sams later named Great Value), a study on there private label soft drink showed new packaging was needed to stay competitive, while not knocking out the brand names as Wal-Mart sells those products also (Fracenda 2007). Wal-Mart has been able to sustain this competitive advantage by staying ahead of others in designing and delivering products in new fashion, Wal-Mart product can be distinguished just by design and packaging. Products sold by Wal-Mart have measurable and non measurable attributes, both have to consider while preparing a design plan for its products. Cost is a very important attribute of product design. A key decision making process is the constitution of cost. Wal-Mart works with several hundred suppliers and product testing facilities to measure more than 5,250 products up against leading national brands, to ensure Great Value quality is equal to or better (Canning 2009). Having scored on this advantage Wal-Mart needs to design its product and decide on the most important factor of cost. Many of the decisions regarding cost...
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...of Contents Introduction2 Wal-Mart’s resources2 Tangible resources2 Intangible resources3 Human resource3 Wal-Mart’s capabilities4 Distribution4 Corporate function4 Operation4 Management Information4 Marketing5 Competitive advantages5 Knowledge management5 Distribution network5 Relationships strategy with suppliers and associates6 Financial management6 International operation6 Conclusion7 References list7 Introduction This project will analyze resources and capabilities of Wal-Mart and the linkage between two strands. According to Wal-Mart’s case, it can be divided Wal-Mart’s resources into three main types of resource: tangible, intangible, and human resources. Moreover, thanks to its resources, Wal-Mart’s capabilities comprises of distribution, operation, management information, marketing, and corporate function. If linkage between resources and capabilities can be indicated and understood, it enables Wal-Mart to produce many competitive advantages: knowledge management, distribution network, partnerships, and financial management. Through those advantages, Wal-Mart creates some strategies for the growth of its operation line within United State or extending over the world. Wal-Mart’s resources Tangible resources In terms of financial resources, the company has established in discount retailing format and become the largest and most profitable retailer in the world. It has been developing rapidly, as result; Wal-Mart produces much profit to reinvest...
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...Activities of Value Chain in Wal-Mart Wal-Mart is one of the leading Fortune 500 companies, which is spread across the globe. It is perhaps the largest retail chain which deals with everything from food to consumer electronics. In terms of the revenue generated, it leads the fortune 500 companies like GE and Microsoft. Simply put, it has everything a homemaker can ever think of. Affordable price range coupled with aggressive online and market strategy has led to wide acceptance for Wal-Mart in towns and cities alike. Wal-Mart is probably the only largest fortune 500 corporations in the world, which directly services the common man. The major point is that all of these activities have to be in sync in order for the value chain to operate effectively. The support activities is not bound to any of the primary activities, but is supposed to serve them, the first step in analyze of intern resources is to identify how the company’s different activities makes the foundation for its competition strategy. Supportive Activities: 1. Firm Infrastructure: There are 2485 Wal-Mart stores all over the world. This includes 682 Supercentres, 457 Sam’s Clubs, 5 Wal-Mart Neighbourhood Markets and 1007 units of Wal-Mart International. Wal-Mart serves over 100 million customers weekly worldwide. There are 1035000 associates, and the company is America’s largest private employer. Wal-Mart is run from a national headquarter. The headquarter takes care of orders, and every local store has to report...
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...Wal-Mart is not only the world’s largest retailers, but it is also the world’s largest company in terms of revenue ($485 billion USD in 2015) and the world largest private employer with 2.2 million employees. The case describes the growth of Wal-Mart under Sam Walton’s values and leadership and reviews the main functions and operation of the company. Q.1 The retail industry is a highly competitive industry. Although Wal-Mart can rarely be beaten on price, there are many big discounted retail stores such as Target and K-Mart. There are also competitors that offer other advantages such as higher quality (Whole Foods) or better service (Best Buy). There is also little differentiation between the retailers. As seen on Table 2, the sales increase (%) in international markets is higher that of the US market, which means faster growing markets and that the growth can be attributed the industry attractiveness. Table 4 shows that Wal-Mart is doing a lot better in terms of financial performance against its competitors. This means that its performance in more attributable to its competitive advantage rather than industry attractiveness. Competitive advantage has a bigger effect to the performance of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s strategy is low prices and thanks to the huge size of the company, it is able to employ economies of scale in the best way possible. It can negotiate very low prices and offer cost savings to customers. It is also able to import and produce products at very low...
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...Wal-Mart is the number one retailer in the United States. Geographical growth opportunities are shrinking within the boundaries of the United States.The company needs to evaluate multiple options to determine the best strategy to deploy. The challenge is “keeping the world’s biggest retailer on its phenomenal roll and delivering the huge sales and earnings increases that investors had come to expect from Wal-Mart over the years” (Camerius& Hunger, p. 19-30, 2006). The company’s current strategic plan is tothrive in the followingareas: • Low costs, high customer service, and always low prices • Product mix • Logistics and supply-chain management • International markets • Domestic growth • Public relations I have developed multiple strategic alternativesfor the company. They are as follows: • Stability – Pause And Proceed: Pause physical growth then proceed with growth domestically and globally • Growth – Concentration: Concentrated Internet program to target domestic and foreign markets • Growth – Concentration: Horizontal Growth with International Entry for global geographical internal expansion The plan deployed must be consistent with the corporate strategy. Per Sam Walton (1918-1992), the company’s founder, “Our goal has always been in our business to be the very best and, along with that, we believe that in order to do that, you’ve got to make a good situation and put the interests of your associates first. If we really do that consistently, they in turn...
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...Executive Summary At the beginning of 2009, Wal-Mart top management faces the question of whether the same strategy that it has been adopting in the past can be used to maintain the company’s remarkable performance and growth in the next decade. In the last 10 years, Wal-Mart has achieved strong and constant growth in sales and net income. It has maintained the leading position in the U.S. discount retail industry and has become the largest retailer in the world. With the maturity of the industry, coupled with the intense competition from rivalry companies, maintaining the current level of high performance becomes very challenging. The Porter’s Five Forces analysis reveals that the competition among rivals is the driving force of the industry, in which price is the most critical factor. The value chain analysis and resource based view analysis show that Wal-Mart has been very successful in implementing the strategy as the low-cost leader by inculcating cost efficiency in its corporate culture, management style, and operations. It has been the pioneer in adopting cutting edge technology to streamline its supply chain, and to understand and respond timely to customer demand. Wal-Mart has developed many strengths that help guard its leading position and open door to many opportunities for expanding the business. However, it also faces threats from growing too big and in many areas, which makes it vulnerable to losing control, weakened cooperation...
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...Business Model Comparison Name Institution Wal-Mart and Tarket Wal-Mart and Tarket are the two leading retail stores in the United States with a customer base of more than 100 million shoppers. The stores run their operations in different parts of the United States and their annual posting for revenue accounts for a significant percentage of earnings for retails businesses in the US (Zikmund & Babin, 2013). Together, the stores have a capital base worth billions in dollars. Over the years, the stores have engaged in stiff competition in trying to increase their customer base. The companies share commonalities for being the only retailing businesses that record growth in times of financial crisis. However, difference exists in the approach used by the management in running the operations of the stores. At Wal-Mart for instance, the administration is open to communication and they encourage employees to use of stratagems that increase profits at the company (Böhm, 2008). Tarket on the other hand uses similar strategies but they emphasize on satisfying both customers and the employees. Moreover, Tarket is inclined towards promoting high quality products that give consumers value for their money. For the past few years, the two companies have been engaging in stiff competition in trying to outwit each other by using modern techniques in running their operations (Böhm, 2008). In a bid to entice customers, Walmart have been offering bargain on prices for their commodities...
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...SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT Supply Chain Management University of Maryland University College ITEC610 Section 1142 Semester 0809 Abstract This paper defines the concept of technology in Supply Chain Management used to promote planning, analyze and account for the operations of a supply chain business with the goal being increased profits as well as a satisfied clients. This paper will discuss how to accomplish the benefits of cost, and profits through the use of a Supply Chain Management system. A thorough examination between buyers and sellers, along with the supply chain will be evaluated. This paper will investigate and analyze the ways in which the inventory management at Wal-Mart helps in its business processes. This paper will also look into the characteristics of supply chain management, including risk-management, inventory strategies and decision-making, and customer relationship aspects. Finally, it will look at the importance of sharing data by utilizing information systems. Supply chain is a network of retailers, distributors, transporters, storage facilities and suppliers that participate in the production, delivery and sale of a product to the consumer (Kietzman, 2008). Every effort involved in producing and delivering is looked at in supply chain, from the final product supplier's supplier to the customer's customer. A Business depends on supply chain to provide them with what they need in order...
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... July 5, 2011 Resources and Capabilities of Wal-Mart Wal-Mart had enough financial resources to make capital investments to improve its operations and labor productivity. Most important investments were technological investments such as the UPC (Uniform Product Code) infrastructure, the computerized system within stores and the satellite network that enabled almost real-time communication among the stores, the distribution centers and vendors. These technological resources can also be classified as equipment related resources. As a result of these resources, Wal-Mart had strengthened capabilities in financial management, purchasing, administration, inventory management, labor productivity and store management. The computerized system within the stores enabled Wal-Mart to wire the merchandise requests of the stores directly to the central computer at the related headquarter, which functioned as a distribution center. In case the stock levels were lower than the critical levels, the merchandise could be reordered directly from the related vendors thanks to this computerized system. This system not only enabled to track inventory, sales and accounting functions but also strengthened the bargaining power in purchasing of Wal-Mart. Each vendor could supply no more than 2.8% of total purchase of Wal-Mart. With the $20 million worth of satellite network investment, Wal-Mart could ease the real-time communication among the stores, the distribution...
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...Case 1-2, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Discussion Questions: 1-1. What is Wal-Mart’s strategy? Answer: The major wining strategy of Wal-Mart is selling branded products at low cost with large volume by improving their operation management system, utilize their buying power to lower the price from their vendors. The second strategy is to use “saturation” strategy for store expansion and further expansion to worldwide. The third strategy is Wal-Mart’s commitment to customers; always provide excellent service to their customers to make their customers always feel that Wal-Mart is very accountable and friendly. The fourth strategy is respect for the individuals, which Wal-Mart treads their employees well and push them to excel in what they do to increase employees’ loyalty and dedication. 1-2. What is the basis on which Wal-Mart builds its competitive advantage? Answer: The fundamental basis is lowering the cost as much as possible. Wal-Mart has implemented the world most effective operation management system to reduce its cost on operation management, such like: 1. Reducing warehouse storage cost by utilizing RFID technologies, just-in-time method. 2. Reducing products distributions cost by carefully select the distribution center locations and store locations, and building up self owned world largest tracking networks. 3. Increase the efficiency of communication and information sharing by building up satellite communication channels and real-time information system, which...
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...Walmart Strategic Analysis of Wal-Mart Fan Yang Professor Richard Linowes MGMT-458-002H May 1, 2009 Yang 2 Executive Summary Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer in U.S. and also one of the biggest multinational companies in the world. It is well-known for its low-cost structure and has been doing very well despite of the current market instability. However, it still faces threats from competitors in the retail industry and has weaknesses to be improved in the future. To help Wal-Mart achieve greater success and sustain its competency, this paper will cover an all-rounded and detailed business analysis on Wal-Mart and the industry it is currently in. The analysis will touch on different perspectives, such as Wal-Mart’s strength, opportunities, weaknesses and threats. Moreover, a brief overview of the retail industry and Wal-Mart’s history are provided to facilitate a deeper and better understanding of the analysis on Wal-Mart. To help Wal-Mart better exploit its strength and opportunities and reduce threats and weaknesses, recommendations are provided for each of the four sections. I hope the recommendations will be carefully considered for proper implementation. Yang 3 Overview of Retail Industry The overall retail industry is currently experiencing a sale slowdown due to the widely spread economic crisis in US because consumers reduce their spending during weak economic time. According to an article on BusinessWeek, the real consumer spending declined by 3.7% in the...
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...Fundamental management Paper Outline Geographic design Functional design Customer-based design Product design Service design Hybrid design Matrix design Marketing channels Wal-Mart organizational structure Question 1: Explain how organizational design such as geographic, functional, customer-based, product, service, hybrid, matrix, marketing channels, and departmentalization determine which structure best suits your selected organization’s needs. Wal-Mart has a Hybrid design because it has integrated all the designs. Geographic design Wal-Mart is one of the world’s largest retailers with stores in the US and other parts of the world. It is one of the largest employer in the world through its numerous outlets in the United States and other nations. The history of Wal-Mart dates back to the early 1960s when the discount retail industry was emerging. In 1962, Sam Walton risked all his property to secure finances to establish a new venture in the discounts retail industry. In the same year, three other discounts retail stores commenced their operations. These stores included Kmart, Target, and F.W. Woolworth (Wal-Mart, 2012). Functional design The store offers products including clothes, groceries, car accessories, and cell phone services. The organization has diversified its operations to sell almost everything that can be offered. The store is regarded as a one-stop-shop. The shop mostly offers discount on all products, and this has been the cutting edge to...
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...WAL-MART’S PROBLEMS IN Wal-Mart’s Problems in International Market Patiporn Kitlertphiroj University College of University of Denver Abstract Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer in the world, is spreading its power throughout the world, starting with nine countries in Asia, Europe and South America. The expansion has planed for more in the near future. With its attempt to penetrate hypermarket culture in every country which it enters, many severe problems are come into play. Acquisitions and joint venture with local businesses became a problem in nationalism country. Thus, strict governments’ rules and regulations blocked business operations. Misreading competitors and late in entry destroyed location opportunities the same as harmed relationship with local suppliers. Inadaptable to local culture become a big problem in global business. Moreover, low wages, unions and sex discrimination brought Wal-Mart to be an evil in employees’ perspective. Literature Review Wal-Mart is the largest Discount Store in the United States. Its magnitude is not only recognized domestically but also expanded to International Market. The company believes that one day this one will replace the United States position when the trend down (Molin, 2004). With this goal Wal-mart is encouraged to expanding stores into nine countries around the world and more in its plans (About Wal-Mart, 2001). Being number one in the United States does not always guarantee for being number one...
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...Founded in 1962 by Sam Walton, Wal-Mart followed an amazing pattern of success and growth, eclipsing all other U.S. department store retailers by the early 1990�s.� In early spring 2001, Wal-Mart enjoyed a huge market capitalization of over $230B, which was down from highs of nearly $300B in early 2000.� Over the last year, however, Wal-Mart had suffered a number of failures in its Internet-based operations, as it tried feverishly, along with many other traditionally �bricks-and-mortar� companies, to make a transition to the Internet.� As much of the commotion in the markets relative to the Internet subsided due to a slowing economy and a number of high-profile �dot-com� failures, Wal-Mart continued to experiment with it�s Internet presence and corporate strategy.� In this paper, we discuss Wal-Mart and its technical transition to the Internet.� First, we examine the company from a value chain and core competency perspective, to gain insight on what value the company brings to the table, both in its traditional and Internet operations. We give a synopsis of Wal-Mart�s recent and current online philosophies, and then turn to Wal-Mart�s strategy as it relates to the transition.� Finally, we provide an analysis of Wal-Mart�s prospects and recommendations for the future. Sources of Value�������� Wal-Mart had always invested heavily in infrastructure.� They were among the first to use point-of-sale Uniform Product Codes (UPC) scanning, and intra-store radio frequency (RF) transmission...
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...Analysis and Recommendations Introduction – Wal-Mart, founded by Sam Walton in 1962, is one of the world largest companies by market capitalization and number of people employed and touching millions of customers everyday. There are more than 7,800 Wal-Mart stores and Sam’s Club locations in 16 markets worldwide and there are more than 2 million associates serving more than 100 million customers per year (About Us, n.d.) It is the largest grocery retailer in the United States with an estimated market share of around 20% of the retail grocery and consumables business. To be able to efficiently operate such a complex operation at such a large and do it consistently would only be possible by the huge effort by Wal-Mart’s ‘associates’ as its employees are called. This papers looks at the human resources practices of Wal-Mart with a special focus on group and team behavior, leadership, conflict and negotiation, human resource practices and organizational culture and diversity within the company to understand them and also provide some recommendations to make them better in the future. Analysis of various HR related areas of Wal-Mart – One of the reasons why Wal-Mart has been so successful and scale up its model across so many locations is the values and beliefs established by its founder and the customer centric culture that is replicated across locations. The company right from the time of its inception has a clear mission which is to save its customers money and enable them to...
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