Walmart Competitive Advantage

The company markets its unique products to youth markets which it feels are underrepresented and inadequately reached by its competitors. The company uses innovative and creative, and it effectively set Jones Soda apart from the competition. By allowing consumers to assist in package design, Jones Soda became a brand that concerned itself more with the consumer than with the actual product. This has made consumers feel more relevant, has given them a sense of ownership over the brand, and has encouraged customer loyalty. Due the field is so competitive with several ways to stay competitive in their designated field. Through distribution, brand name, brand image, price, labeling and packaging, advertising, quality of the beverage, and new ideas they have accomplished this. Jones Soda competes for customer appreciation, retail shelf space and for marketing focus by their distributors, who also distribute other beverage brands. Jones Soda currently distributes their products in several retail outlets. These outlets include Barnes and Noble, Panera Bread Company, Cost Plus World Markets, Starbucks and Target Corporation. As well as these mature locations, Jones Soda also distributes to other independent vendors.

Provides analysis of customers to serve. For example, in order to widen the gap and create a competitive advantage the value chain shows what products appeal to certain customer segments. A value chain can be utilized to adjust the scope of operations.

There are little threats to Walmart because it’s such a big corporation. One threat is its competitors. Because Walmart sells the same stuff as Target and Kmart, Walmart has to compete. They have to compete with the other stores prices, goods, and employee

Conducting a value chain analysis provides a snapshot for identifying a firm’s relative competitive performance, core competencies, and for focusing on customer centric activities. Costco’s customer driven focus allows primary and support business activities to work in unity creating a stronger competitive advantage and thereby increasing profitability. Profitability and shareholder value rely on coordination of both sets of business activities to create a firm’s competitive advantage.

For the company to ensures success in its operations there is need to cultivate customer loyalty and facilitate efficient supplies, differentiator linkage between operations and buyers must be put in place. This will be facilitated through some ways. To cater for customer needs the company will have to ensure it adopts a competitive pricing strategy against the existing competitors and new entrants in the market. The company has a lean pricing policy and to take advantage of its off- price apparel strategy. The customer’s loyalty has to be sustained through the low prices they enjoy

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of discount department stores and a warehouse stores. The company is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas and was founded by Sam Walton.

In order for the strategy to be successful it should realistically assess the company’s internal resources. An internal analysis is used to identify the strengths of the company and identifies the weakness to overcome in the strategy. The internal analysis will help with understanding the internal issues that exist at StilSim by evaluating a value chain analysis, a resource analysis, core competencies and a stakeholder analysis.

Effective value chain as a competitive advantage can contribute significantly to the prosperity of a firm in the competitive arena, but it can cause dire situations if not operated properly (Guy, 2011). However, there are conflicts among companies as to how stakeholders think they gain competitive advantage. Porter (1996) suggests: A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve. It must deliver greater value to customers or create comparable value at lower cost or do both.

The value chain is one of the critical elements of a company’s strategy in today’s competitive world, because company’s profit depends on how the successful and efficient it runs its operations and how the end product appeals to the customers at a price that covers all the expenses of the company.

Value Chain analysis evaluates each step business goes through from inception to finality. The goal is to maximize the value for the total cost. Costco's mission is to provide their members with quality goods and services at the lowest possible prices. The company’s mission, values and strategies suggest Costco uses a broad enterprise strategy which fits in the societal framework. To ensure employee motivation, Costco offers them a unique banquet of benefits. This include; paying health benefits for them, 50% higher wage, employee retention of over 90 percent, and maintaining employees even during recession periods (Costco, 2010). The Company’s strength is its primary value chains which split into two distinct functions: Demand fulfilment and Demand generation. Demand fulfilment includes input logistics, operations, and output logistics. Demand generation involves sales, marketing, and service department which breaks down into sub-tiers. Costco’s support activities include HRM, technology development, firm infrastructure and procurement. Costco’s weaknesses are difficult to pinpoint; one weakness is persistent low operating profit margins. Bigger profits can occur by not paying employee benefits and with demanding higher returns from their suppliers. The problem would be at what cost?  Costco receives cost advantages from value adding major (brand items) activities. However, it continues to experience a challenge

The value chain is one of the critical elements of a company’s strategy in today’s competitive world, because company’s profit depends on how the successful and efficient it runs its operations and how the end product appeals to the customers at a price that covers all the expenses of the company.

According to Bucklin (1966) it’s important to understand customer preferences when designing the value chain. This because the value chain will only be viable over time if customers feel that it provides a form of value. This value is created if the actors of the chain provide activities that result in cost- efficiency and/ or better service. There are five service performance areas where actors can create this value: unit size, availability, waiting time, variation in production and information (REF).

Question 1: What are the isolating mechanisms preserving Wal-Mart’s competitive advantage in the US market? (use readings case 7)

Increase customers’ value by adding value to features of the products, improve customer service by being more responsive, increase the range of complementary products and modify as per orders. Differentiation should promote long-term profit and growth. Moreover to benefit from cost advantage, identify both primary and support activities are clearly identify, required a strong know1egde of organization value if value chain will disrupt. Analyse how to create customer value, recognize cost drivers from each activity and identify between link activities by reducing cost from one to

This suggests that a company can choose to pursue one of the two types of competitive advantage. It either chooses to use lower costs than the market competitors through differentiating itself along dimensions value by customers to command a higher price or they can choose to pursue one of the two types of scope which are focus that is selling they products to a very specific market segment or industry-wide which means supplying their products to a broader market with many segments. In our case, H&M pursues the cost leadership strategy because their business value relies on the supply of affordable and fashionable clothing at record times. This situation also helps the company to set the barriers of entry in the industry high for new