Presentation of Final Project

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Company Overview

Walmart Inc is an American multinational retail company. It has its headquarters

in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company has 11,510 stores and clubs in 27 countries.

According to the fortune 500 lists, Walmart is the largest company in terms of revenue

and the largest private employer globally. Walmart's objective is to provide safe,

affordable food and other products to people worldwide (Ellickson, 2016). It aims at

achieving the objective in a way that fosters environmental and social sustainability,

economic opportunity, and creating value for the community. Walmart Inc provides retail

services as its primary product. The company also offers private-label brands, on-demand digital

streaming services as well as house brands. Some of the products that are sold in its retail

business include foodstuffs, mobile phones, electronics, beauty products, household items,

among others. Although the company's international sales dropped in 2020, they accounted for

almost 25% of its revenue. The company had net sales of $120.1 billion internationally in 2020.

That represents the sales that were made in its operations outside the US. That was a slight drop

from 2019 that can be attributed to the world’s economic condition in 2020 (Walmart Inc, 2020).

The company has some strengths. One of its main strengths is its immense size, which leads to

economies of scale. The company can also access a lot of funds, thus growing at a faster rate.

The company also has an efficient supply chain enhanced by technological advancement. That

ensures that Walmart evades the market risks such as disruption of the supply chain, thus giving

the company a competitive advantage. The company also has some weaknesses. The company

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uses a cost leadership strategy, which is easy to imitate. Additionally, the company earns very

thin profits from the products that it sells. The company also lacks other specific competitive

differentiators apart from its organizational size and low prices. Thus, it cannot compete with

retailers that promote the quality of their goods and services. The company has various

opportunities for growth and improvement. It has the opportunity of expanding to developing

countries. That is because the cheaper goods have a higher demand in developing countries. The

company also can improve its human resource practices by employing highly qualified

employees and training the existing employees. Lastly, the company faces some threats. People

are turning into healthy lifestyles, and most of Walmart's foods are categorized as unhealthy. The

company also faces a threat of competition from both big and small retailers.

Competitive analysis

One of the main competitors of Walmart in the global market is Carrefour. In this section, the

comparison of the two companies will be analyzed. Both companies are retailers. Therefore, they

sell a variety of goods in their retail outlets. They include foodstuffs, electronics, clothes, mobile

phones, household items, and beauty products. Both Carrefour and Walmart use cost leadership

strategies as they offer discounted prices for their products. Carrefour used supermarkets,

hypermarkets, and discount stores to reach its customers. On the other hand, Walmart uses an

intensive distribution strategy. It offers its products in physical stores and on its e-commerce

platform. Walmart provides discounts for its product and runs frequent promotions. On the other

hand, Carrefour uses the penetration pricing strategy, which involves charging low prices. The

two companies use different strategies that enable them to remain competitive in the market. In

the distribution process, Walmart uses an intensive distribution medium in which the company's

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stores and e-commerce websites provide a range of similar products and services. This

marketing mix element has helped Walmart attract customers by making shopping convenient

based on physical locations of stores and high accessibility of online services. In the distribution

process, Carrefour has created an extensive variety of plans that cater to all forms of shopping

patterns. It makes sure that all its stores seem inviting by using attractive and modern designs

with various banners in each store, which offer a competitive advantage and help raise sales and

market research (Christopher, 2016). The pricing strategy of Carrefour focuses on low prices

each day, and it regularly switches between different policies. The company keeps a very low

price for essential goods such as those that are highly price elastic. Walmart also uses the

everyday low price approach as its major revenue model. Its aim is to entice a lot of customers to

attain high sales volume and a profitable business.

The marketing strategies that Walmart embraces include public relations, personal

selling, sales promotions, and advertisements (Chang, & Hu, 2020). It advertises on various

platforms such as websites, television, and newspapers. Sales promotions are carried out in the

form of special discounts and deals that attract more customers to their stores. In the marketing

strategy of Carrefour, an in-store promotion system was developed by IBM and its partners. This

promotion system was made for Carrefour's hypermarket stores and supermarkets, which enables

the company to plan and implement more targeted campaigns and obtain response about how

efficient and effective they are. Carrefour also launched a loyalty card, “MyCLUB,” for its retail

customers to attain loyalty and foster retention of customers.

Collaborator Analysis

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Walmart has a successful supply chain. It has reliable suppliers who supply products to them.

The reliability of the suppliers ensures that the company does not experience stock-outs. Walmart

has also introduced an e-commerce marketplace. The company partners with third-party sellers

who sell on their e-commerce platform. The company may experience some challenges in the

partnerships, especially with third party sellers. That is, if such sellers sell low-quality products,

it will have a negative implication on Walmart's brand.

PEST Analysis

The PEST analysis indicates the external environment factors that affect a company. In this case,

the PEST analysis of Walmart will be explained. It will indicate the political, economic, social,

and technological factors that affect Walmart’s international operations. The political and

regulatory factors may affect Walmart either negatively or positively. Walmart operates in

countries with high political stability. That is an opportunity for the business to thrive (Nguyen,

2017). The company is affected positively by the political support for globalization. However,

the company is affected negatively by the political pressure to increase the minimum wage.

Walmart is under pressure for economic changes. One of the external economic factors that

affect Walmart is the stability of major economies. That creates an opportunity for the company.

Another economic factor is the continuous growth of developing countries, thus creating another

opportunity. It is also affected by the changes in interest rates and inflation. Walmart influences

consumer perception and preferences. One of the social factors that affect Walmart includes the

retail market's health lifestyle trend. That is an opportunity that can be harnessed. It is also

affected by urban migration and cultural diversity trends. Walmart should address the

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technological trends. That will increase the company's opportunities and thus make it more

competitive n the market. Some of the technological factors that affect the company include

increased business automation, increased mobile device usage among consumers, and business

analytics.

Recommendations

To meet its objectives, the company should come up with various strategies. In this section, some

recommendations will be given to ensure that the company becomes more competitive. One of

the strategies that may be used is to verify the quality of the products sold by third-party sellers.

That will ensure that they sell goods with high quality. Secondly, the company should foster the

quality of its products. That will increase its competitive advantage in the market as it will be

known for high-quality affordable products. The company should also promote its e-commerce

platform. Currently, Walmart's e-commerce platform is not well-known. Thus, by promoting it,

the company will ensure its e-commerce platform's growth. For Walmart to achieve its

objectives, it has to embrace various marketing strategies such as targeting new customers,

improving their product awareness, increasing sales, and setting an effective goal model.

Besides the marketing approaches that Walmart uses, like advertisements and social posts, it

needs to spend more time putting out content that entails what consumers will acquire from using

their goods and services. The company should also target new customers by using social media.

Walmart can pay different social media platforms to put its ads in front of viewers and also

examine the competition and to whom they are able to sell their goods and services. The

company should also set goals that are time-bound, relevant, actionable, measurable, and

specific.

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References

Chang, Y., & Hu, J. (2020). Analysis on the Mode of Multinational Retail Enterprises Entering

Chinese Market—Take Walmart, Carrefour, and Metro as Examples. Modern Economy,

11(01), 17.

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Christopher, M. (2016). Logistics & supply chain management. Pearson Uk.

Ellickson, P. B. (2016). The evolution of the supermarket industry: from A & P to

Walmart. In Handbook on the Economics of Retailing and Distribution. Edward

Elgar Publishing.

Nguyen, T. T. H. (2017). Wal-Mart’s successfully integrated supply chain and the

necessity of establishing the Triple-A supply chain in the 21st century. Journal of

Economics & Management, 29, 102-117.

Walmart Inc. (2020). 2020 Annual Report. Corporate.Walmart. https://

corporate.walmart.com/media-library/document/2020-walmart-annual-report/

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