Introduction to the Company
Walmart Canada was founded in the year 1994 (Kampf, 2007). Its headquarters offices are located in Mississauga, Ontario. The company started as a small single discount store that was only focused on selling more goods but at a cheaper price. As a result of its continued growth over the past 50 years, the company has expanded to become one of the largest retailers in the entire world. The company was founded as a result of the acquisition of another company. It acquired the Woolco chain and has expanded and opened over 400 stores spread all over the nation (Kampf, 2007). It serves roughly over 1.2 million customers daily.
Additionally, the company has online shops that were estimated to be visited by approximately 750000 consumers every day. It has also been rated as the country's top 10 most dominant marques. It is also Canada’s largest proprietor with more than 8500 acquaintances (Kampf, 2007). It is also important to know that the company deals with more than 120000 products ranging from fresh groceries, electronics, and specialized services like pharmacies, optical center cellular phone stores, salons, and local bank branches (Kampf, 2007). The company’s main focus is improving people's lives by ensuring goods and services are available as cheaply as possible.
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Introduction of the industry the company is in.
Walmart, Inc. involves itself in both wholesale and retail forms of business. Its main aim is to offer merchandised products and services at a lower price as compared to other businesses. Due to its huge size, the company has the company come up with different ways to achieve its core objective. To achieve its objectives and goals, the company operates through the following business segments; Walmart U.S., Walmart International, and Sam's Club (Muhammad, 2015). All three segments deal with different types of products. Walmart's U.S. section's main concern and involvement are in customer products, working underneath the Walmart, Wal-Mart, and Walmart Neighborhood Market brands. It also operates as walmart.com and other eCommerce brands.
Due to its extension to other countries outside its borders, Walmart International manages supercenters, supermarkets, hypermarkets, warehouse clubs, and cash & carry outside of the United States (Muhammad, 2015). It deals with all operations that go beyond the borders of the nation. On the other hand, Sam’s Club is made up of a membership-only warehouse club and samsclubs.com. All three segments have been put in as a strategy to meet all their customer’s needs. A company of such magnitude, and serving such several customers, had to come up with strategic means of handling all of them.
Company’s product introduction/ targeted customers.
Walmart Company targets more than 95% of the general population (Muhammad, 2015). It targets the very individual who is not wealthy and is below the poverty line. These include people on public assistance and people who don’t entirely rely on a paycheck at the end of the month. People's entire population of middle-class people is sorted by services and goods provided by Walmart. However, the company is not mostly concerned with wealthy individuals. The truly rich people will not stop at Walmart to pick up their groceries, have their hair done, and buy any electronics or even decorations for their houses. They wouldn’t even think of taking their car for services in the organization. They are mostly concerned with expensive and prestigious things and thus being eliminated by Walmart as their target market.
Walmart Company provides solutions to the bigger population that can’t afford to live and spend their little money on luxury things. They, therefore, act as a link between the rich and the poor by providing appropriate goods that will make life for the common citizens. The majority of Americans have also found a job in this company. As many companies are shifting their attention and market target to the rich people, Walmart is focusing on the poor and common citizens. This makes it different from the rest of its competitors who deal with high quality and expensive end products.
Company’s Financial Situation for the Past Three Years
Although the company has been facing a lot of criticism and high competition, over the past few years numbers have proven to be working in its favor. In the year 2017, the company reached $500 billion in terms of revenue (Magnani, Liu, Xie, Banerjee, 2019). This was the first time the company reflected such a huge figure. Additionally, it delivered the highest comp sales and recorded a growth rate of 44 percent. The international company had ten out of eleven markets posted positive comp sales.
In the year 2018, total revenue was beyond $500 billion. Its e-commerce activities grew by 44% and its operating cash flow was estimated to be roughly 28.3 billion (Magnani, Liu, Xie, Banerjee, 2019). During this financial year, $14.4 billion was given back to its shareholders in terms of dividends and share repurchases. Its main focus was eCommerce. The company is looking towards improving its online shopping and reducing its delivery days to two working days. This is a strategy that is aimed at increasing efficiency and ensuring maximum profit is obtained.
During the year 2019, the company’s sales grew from $1.374 billion to $1.413 billion per day. The company’s President and CEO, Doug McMillon commented that accelerated growth was witnessed as a result of a favorable economic environment (Magnani, Liu, Xie, Banerjee, 2019). Most of the sales we made online and this was a result of continued digitalization of the [image: ]company’s customers.
Company’s high-level organizational chart/leadership group
Walmart has a hierarchal functional structure. It has two features based on hierarchy and function definition. The hierarchy entails the vertical line of authority as the function-based entails a group of employees working together for a specific purpose. Based on hierarchy managers could influence the organization. This is through new policies and strategies developed and adapted. In this way, effective control and follow-up is done.
On the other hand, a function-based structure allows the workers to fulfill and carry out certain duties. Positions where people are allowed to work freely include the human resource department, information technology department, and marketing. The two structures have been put in place to allow for easy influence and implementation of the company’s policies
Company’s social/ marketing activities
Walmart Company has adapted marketing strategies locally, regionally, and internationally which address conditions in industries. For its success in the industry, Walmart has used slogans such as “save money, live better, worry no more” which have attracted more people. This is due to the low prices of a variety of goods and activities. It also runs frequent promotions with discounts in different seasons. This encourages their customers to keep buying more as they create new customers. The promotions are carried out across the globe as it is a multinational company. Social media being a great platform in business advertising, Walmart has not been left behind. Posts through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Interest, and online marketing applications are greatly used in this company. Thus accessing people from all over the world with recent updates on its products and services. In addition, Walmart interacts with its customers through questions on the quality of its products and services, inquiries, and recommendations. Having in mind the needs of the customers, Walmart has greatly improved on the quality they offer and maintaining customers.
Walmart has ensured that a wide variety of goods are on board. These include groceries, furniture appliances, and entertainment. This makes it easy to promote their products as this is what their customers want. Employment of other forms of advertising media such as billboards, ads, e-commercial platforms, and Television advertisements is practiced. The use of reliable warranties and replacement policies which give customers peace of mind has enabled Walmart to promote their products. This is because customers are assured that they are covered in case of any damages. The marketing strategies have enabled Walmart to be among the leading companies. Its uniqueness and customer-related strategies have created a win-win scenario for both the company and its customers.
Summary
Walmart Company has had an incredible impact on the economy and society. As it continues to open new stores, more jobs are created and goods are being made available to the local people. The economy surrounding these stores is being stimulated and expanded as this acts as a buster to the economy. The company offers goods at low prices to its customers making it a point of refuge for them. They have eased the burden of having to spend a lot of cash.
Although the company provides services and commodities at a lower cost, it comes at a cost. The company is facing criticism for underpaying its workers. Claims are that the pay that the workers receive can’t even afford them the most necessities. To maintain its low prices, the company contracts out manufacturing to foreign countries that use slave labor. This eliminates the need for manufacturing to be done in the US (Magnani, Liu, Xie, Banerjee, 2019). This is done to capitalize on cheap labor.
It is important to note that Walmart Company provides solutions to the middle class and the poor by providing products that would have otherwise been impossible to acquire. The company has been a source of employment and has created opportunities for many who would otherwise not have had the opportunity.
Reference
- Kampf, C. (2007). Corporate social responsibility: Walmart, Maersk and the cultural bounds of representation in corporate web sites. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 12(1), 41-57.
- Muhammad, A. (2015). Workers ‘Lives, Walmart’s Pocket. Economic and Political Weekly, 50, 143-150.
- Schuetz, J. (2015). Why are Walmart and Target next-door neighbors? Regional Science and Urban Economics, 54, 38-48.
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/183399/walmarts-net-sales-worldwide-since-2006/
- Magnani, A., Liu, F., Xie, M., & Banerjee, S. (2019, May). Neural Product Retrieval at Walmart. com. In Companion Proceedings of the 2019 World Wide Web Conference (pp. 367-372).
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