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Walmart's Competitive Strategy Case Study

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3) Product: What are the competitive advantages of the firm?
Competitive advantage is anything that a company has, or does better, that customers value but the competition cannot match. This is usually manifested in terms of a lower cost or a differentiated product or service. With 3960 stores in the US and more than $209 billion in annual sales, Wal-Mart stands top in its position and it is an incessantly profit-driven company. With profit as the goal and service as the process the company is at its core.
According to Friedman (2005), Walmart’s greatest strength is its inventory control which is achieved through its effective distribution centers which he labels as “Walmart symphony with no finale; it just plays over and over” (Friedman, …show more content…

Even its slogan says “everyday low prices”. This has helped in all the major decisions at Walmart including the use of technology, marketing, and distribution. According to Ortega (1998), Walmart’s simple mission was “offer the lowest price. Cut costs to the bone, and keep cutting so you can offer the lowest price.” Wal-Mart focuses on providing lowest possible price among competition, instead of providing promotions. This attracts more customers eventually leading to higher revenues and hence higher profits for the …show more content…

The company also had to make certain that workers were trained on the new procedures in a language, format, and vocabulary that they can understand.
In addition, Wal-Mart had to improve its hazard communications training.
Now, Walmart is extra careful regarding some critical issues which are highlighted below:
Anti-corruption
Walmart continues to enhance its processes and systems to help prevent corruption – that is, the use of improper payments or anything of value, including gifts or travel, to secure an improper business advantage from a commercial party. It expanded its anti-corruption continuous improvement program to monitor progress and identify enhancement opportunities. To date, Walmart has provided anti-corruption training to more than 1,300 external entities that interact on its behalf.

Consumer protection
As Walmart keeps expanding the business to serve customers in new and more convenient ways, it continues to implement additional consumer protection standards and controls according to the

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Walmart’s customer service is quite awful; Walmart’s shopping experience has become chaotic and unpleasant for consumers. The employees appear as if they don’t want to be there. The lack of joy and delight in the store is felt in the atmosphere. The employees have attitude towards the customers and little patience for them. When in need of help finding an item or having trouble about anything; none of the employees seem to be there.

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Walmart was founded in the summer of 1962 by Kingfisher, Oklahoma native Sam Walton. Although Walton’s original vision for the store was relatively modest, the half century since its founding has seen Walmart morph into one of the biggest companies in the world. Today headed by one Doug McMillon, Walmart boasts more than 5000 stores in the United States of America alone and employs more than 1.5 million people. Walmart is undoubtedly an American institution, yet each Walmart store feels like its own little country. Walmart seems to have its own laws and customs and the people who shop their on a regular basis appear almost primitive in their behavior as they go about raiding the store’s shelves and wrestling with fellow customers for discount flat screen televisions and bulk packages of two-ply toilet paper.

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Since the company was founded as a corner store, the company’s business plan has always emphasized on expect more, pay less brand promise that sets it apart from its chief rival, Walmart. Although, Walmart is known for its low prices and offers a large selection to its customers; it’s customer service is often found to be nonexistent. This

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What are the two types of core competencies that drive a firm’s competitive advantage? Which firms demonstrate a clear competitive advantage because of (a) major value-creating skills/core capabilities and/or (b) superior assets or resources? Which firms have demonstrated sustainable sources of competitive advantage? The two core competencies that drive a firm’s competitive advantage are cost leadership and differentiation.

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Wal-Mart has faced numerous lawsuits for inequitable labor. The huge market enterprise values its employees with little respect. For example, it demands for long hours and overtime shifts to meet holiday sales. This is one of the reasons why the company has earned an outstanding profit over the decade. Yet, with all the affluence the company has, it still does not compensate for workers' healthcare benefits nor their low wages.

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Competitive advantage is when two or more firms compete within the same markets, one firm possess a competitive advantage over its rival when it earns (or has potential to earn) a persistently higher rate of profit. There are three types of competitive advantage. a) Cost leadership strategy occurs when a firm a delivers the same services as its rivals but at a lower price. b) The differentiation strategy occurs when a firm delivers greater services for the same price of its rivals. c) Focus strategy is a focused approach requires the firm to concentrate along one specific segment either a cost leadership or a specialization strategy.

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The article “Labouring the Walmart Way,” author Deenu Parmar talks about how Walmart is able to achieve selling goods at a lower price then any average superstore. The author goes on to explain that Walmart’s antiunion efforts, employee selection, low prices and high retention rate all contribute to their major success. Walmart’s stance on ant unionism allows them to keep wage cost down and keep all their profits up. Not allowing a union keeps Walmart with the power to keep low wages and force unpaid overtime.

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It is also efficient, calculated, predicted and controlled. A bit different from the McDonald, Walmart has divided into three parts,which are above store managers,in-store managers and in-store hourly

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This seems like a smart marketing trick that is surely used in other retailers. And what really matters here is that the average American or even those who cannot afford buying things from regular superstores can actually enjoy shopping at Wal-Mart and buy just anything they need at preferential prices. This is the result of Asian-based imports where cutting costs helps Wal-Mart sell at the lowest prices possible thus being able to serve all classes of the

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I. Introduction Walmart Stores, Inc. - the American corporation which was established in 1962, is well-know for the globe’s largest multinational retailer (Walmart 2016). Walmart owns a chain of grocery stores, discount department stores and hypermarkets with about 11,500 retail stores over 28 countries. In 1998, Walmart entered Germany with the acquisition of Wertkauf and Interspar chain (Louisa 2006). Despite having the strongest economy in Europe and the third largest retail market in the world, Germany was not an ideal place for Walmart to achieve its ambition (Knorr and Andt 2003). After nearly a decade struggling to grow, Walmart decided to pull out of German market in 2006 with the loss of one billion dollars (Mark 2006).

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Some of the current ethical issues that Walmart is facing are the treatment of its employees, the methods it employs to obtain retail goods at low prices, the sustainability of its products, and the use of bribery to further corporate interests (Ferrell

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Vision, Mission Statement "Price Leadership Drives Global Performance" is the Wal-Mart visualization statement. The management of Wal-Mart emphasises on price leadership in every market since pricing strategy is the direct approach to reach performance and attract customers. In order to implement price leadership, they stated "Save Money, Live Better", which remains as relevant now as it was in 1962 by Sam Walton. The mission is that everybody is able to purchase products in Wal-Mart because the stores offers low price products to them.

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It has been able to identify the dynamic wants of customers and compete with physical store rivals as well as its E-Commerce rivals such as Amazon. This is well showcased from Wal-Mart’s newest strategy of keeping its online prices almost on par to that of Amazon’s. It was seen that Wal-Mart kept its products priced just 0.3% higher than Amazon's listings, clearly exhibiting the company's endeavors to gain a significant market share during the festival

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Walmart’s compensation strategy is mostly using base pay that follows the market rate. Employees get paid by hours they worked. Pay rates are different and depend on the job position and working department relative to the organizational structure. Walmart uses job evaluation systems to provide internal equity and determine the basis for wage rate. They evaluated the worth of each job in terms of its skills, knowledge, responsibility or duties required and converted into an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly wage rate.

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Mr Price has a wide range of competitors such as H&M, Woolworths and Pick ‘n Pay. A competitive advantage describes how the business has benefits or strengths over its competitors in the market. By having this, the competitors don’t seem as a threat to the company. It’s used

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