Strategic Planning Paper

Her success has recently come in 2011. My plan is to open a second sleep study in San Antonio, Texas. Roxanne will continue to manage the center in Corpus Christ and will help me virtually manage the San Antonio location. Because Roxanne has the information needed to model her sleep center it will be much easier to open up my own sleep evaluation center based on her proposal.

Cost Leadership is Walmart’s generic strategy. Walmart’s focus is on maintaining low prices of goods and services. Walmart is known for low prices, which is the main selling point of the business. The company keeps its prices low through cost reduction in operations.

Advancing to the final stage of the strategic planning model, illustrated in Figure 3.1, evolves from conceptual to reality as our prospect assembles a schedule from all of their prerequisite research applied heretofore. As a result, a logically simplified process produces a single execution model for each phase of the plan. The need for an effective, simplified method to organize all activities, dates, and critical deadlines in an easily maintained process rivals the requirement to retain consistency throughout this particular project life-cycle.

Before the economic downturn Wal-Mart implemented strategies to increase profits. In 2005, Walmart implemented a plan to target wealthier consumers with a more modern marketing campaign (Kabel, 2006). Walmart began stocking more high-end merchandise to cater to this group of consumers (Kabel, 2006). The ability to stay in business relies on a company’s ability to increase business during good economic times as well as bad. The two strategies Walmart used (targeting wealthier customer base and eliminating health coverage) proved that Walmart knows how to adapt to changing markets. Walmart has an awareness of the strategies to implement during economic upswings as well as downturns.

In many organizations, the first step in strategic planning is the creation or updating of the agency’s strategic philosophy (Garner, 2005). This is typically completed by reviewing or creating a mission statement. Many variations of mission statements exist and vary from agency to agency. Most mission statements will contain one or all of these five elements: 1) Purpose, 2) Vision, 3) Strategy, 4) Values, and 5) Standards (Wilkinson & Monkhouse, 1994).

The two economic terms I select so as to learn more about Wal-Mart are resources and choice as well as tradeoff. They both apply to the retailer. When it comes to resources, these are the things that a business makes use of in the course of its operations. Resources include but they are not limited to capital and labor i.e. human resources. When it comes to Wal-Mart, one of the company's most important resources are its employees. According to Yahoo Finance (2012), the retailer currently has approximately 2, 200, 000 full time employees. The entity's current C.E.O is Michael Terry Duke (Yahoo Finance 2012). Regarding choice and tradeoff, it is important to note that any business entity is usually faced with a wide range of choices as well as courses of action. However, choice and tradeoff dictate that the business chooses only one course of action from all the available choices. In the case of Wal-Mart, the entity chose to adopt the cost leadership strategy as opposed to any of Porter's other generic

In 2014, Walmart announced a new president and CEO, Doug McMillion. McMillion had the duty of taking over the world’s largest company in respect to revenue, $473 billion, and the world’s largest private employer, 2.2 million associates. As it turned out, under McMillion’s leadership, in 2015 Walmart experienced the first decline in its annual sales ever. Many people had predicted that Walmart’s better days had been behind them when McMillion became president. As a result of this decline in annual sales, people questioned whether or not Walmart could return to the usual type of growth in sales it had essentially earned every year since it’s founding in 1962. To answer this question, some possibly issues with the management and strategy of Walmart’s business needed to be looked at in depth. Some of these most important issues included: the recent increase in retail sales of the online market compared to the discount retailer market, the state of Walmart’s international business, and the lacking performance of Walmart’s Discount Store, SAM’s Clubs, and Neighborhood Markets compared to their Supercenters.

This research paper will present the history and background of Wal-Mart. The review will describe and evaluate the resources that will provide additional understanding of the corporate operations and its management strategies. A SWOT analysis will be provided which will identify specific areas that can impact the outcome of the organization’s success and potential hazards. Upon conclusion, recommendations will be presented that will help Wal-Mart continue its competitive advantage. This paper will utilize qualitative methods, which will include, reviewing journal articles, reading other pertinent literature, analyzing online corporate records and other respected resources.

Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, believes that “Give what customers want, and a little more” helps an organization to become successful (“10 Rules for Building a Business,” n.d.). Influenced by Walton, Walmart set its mission as “Saving people money so they can live better” as it knows that customers want to have a great shopping experience while saving money. To achieve its mission, Walmart applies cost leadership strategy. Cost leadership strategy is a strategy that an organization competes on the basis of having the lowest cost in its industry. Walmart has using this strategy for more than 50 years since it established. In fiscal 2016, Walmart continue to reducing its cost by starting a cost analytics program in Canada and the U.K. to provide merchants with tools and cost visibility to lead fact-based negotiations with suppliers (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.,

Walmart is a company that most people have heard of; it is one of the largest retail corporations with 11,527 retail units as of 29 February 2016, 4,573 within the United States, 651 Sam’s clubs, and 6,303 Walmart internationals.(“Our Locations,” n.d.) This report aims to take a brief look at the Walmart Corporation; it’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunity and threats along with an environmental analysis, five forces analysis and a look at strategy formation.

Every company, even one as large as Wal-Mart, has strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Some of Wal-Mart’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, identified using information from their website, walmartstores.com, are the

This section will examine Wal-Mart 's company strategy in several sections. Three elements of successful strategy formulation and a fourth element, which exemplifies the implementation process of company strategy, will be looked at. Followed by this, an analysis of key factors contributing to this strategy will be detailed. These include looking at Wal-Mart 's competitive strategy, the CEO 's leadership, and company strategy strengths and weakness assessment.

Walmart has always been considered a powerhouse in the retail business world. It is encouraging to read the story about how Walmart started as a small store in one location but now Walmart has grown to over 11,000 stores worldwide. There is no mistaking that Walmart has shown itself to be a business that has grown to the ranks of empire among retail. With net earnings of more than $482 billion and a staff of more than 2.2million associates worldwide (Walmart, 2016), Walmart has squashed its competitors and created a category all its own. These successes can be contributed to Walmart’s’ exemplary external and internal business environment and their ability to construct a masterful business and corporate level strategy.

In recent years, Walmart has established a total dominion over the retail business, and its influence has suffused throughout entirety of the global market. It has consistently used every option at its disposal to attain the endorsement of its customers. Ultimately, this has lead to it becoming, by a long shot, the largest company in the world by revenue, with approximately 486 billion dollars in 2017 to show for it (Fortune). But this did not happen by virtue of serendipity, and the reasons for this prosperity trace back to its rich history, universally appealing message, and far-sighted vision statement.

Wal-mart was founded by sam Walton in 1962. The idea behind was to bring discount shopping stores to rural America. It grew rapidly with huge popularity. Today it has 3708 Wal-mart U. S. Units, 569 U.S. Sam’s Club and 4112 International units. It toppled GE and became No.1 in Fortune 500 Company list with annual revenue of 405 Billion USD and employs about 2 million associates. It has presence in multiple sectors across retail industry like grocery, Auto, Pharmacy, Jewelry, Clothes, electronics, books etc. Let’s consider strategies in place and changes during last 25 years of Wal-mart.