Sustainability Strategy For Walmart Wal Mart

Wal-Mart is a brand that is well known around the world, especially in the USA. It has gradually developed into the largest retailer in the world. Wal-Mart’s globalization efforts have been happening rapidly. But have they been successful in all aspects of their international expansion or not? This is the main thought that is going to be discussed in this essay. The questions I will be looking at are based on a case called “Wal-Mart takes on the world” from the book of International Business The Challenge of Global Competition eleventh edition – Ball, McCulloch, Geringer, Minor, and McNett. Questions are the following:

Wal-Mart should project a community friendly, environment caring and employee welfare seeking brand image to combat. Emerging threats. Investment in sustainability initiatives like solar energy and recycling could be possible opportunities.

In business, three major strategies comprising of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategies exist. The focus strategy emphasizes on providing services and products to a specified buyer group or market segment within a given geographic market. The differentiation approach is often defined as provision of services or products that are perceived to be unique in the market place. Wal-Mart emphasizes on the long-term strategy of cost leadership. Through this strategy, the company ensures that it offers customers with quality products at relatively lower prices than other providers in the industry. Through overall cost leadership strategy, Wal-Mart has been offering better quality products at a lower price than any competitor can offer. For the organization to achieve this goal, it has developed long-term supply chain management, which ensures that products are made available to the market at the required time (Enz, 2010).

Yes, I do believe Wal-Mart is doing enough to become more sustainable. Wal-Mart is one of the most powerful companies internationally. As with all things that come with power, Wal-Mart’s business practices are scrutinized thoroughly. This includes their relationships with suppliers, employees, consumers, and the environment. In recent years, the environment has become such a big issue that Wal-Mart, as well as other companies have had to respond to this growing concern.

In contrast, many people and organizations have argued that Walmart is not holding true to their original sustainable commitments. According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Walmart's greenhouse gas emissions have continued to grow over the last 10 years, and it’s percentage of renewable energy is inadequate compared to other major corporations. Stacy Mitchell, the author of the report and a senior researcher at the Institute believes that the core issue behind Walmart’s lack of action is that they will not change their unsustainable business model to make sustainable advancements. She says that, "Walmart has a highly unsustainable business model, built on shipping goods long distances, selling mountains of very short-lived products,

Sustainability has become a great topic of interest in many arenas. Particularly, leading organizations are recognizing sustainability needs to be an essential aspect of their long term strategies. With this recognition, better business practices are being sought by investors as well as sustainability is becoming a driving force for better efficiencies and innovation. Two organizations, Wal-Mart and Starbucks, have both took on sustainability as long term initiatives to address their customer needs and affect how their suppliers operate.

Moving ahead,in order to get the idea about company’s internal environment and its capacity to survive and prosper in the market(Strategic capability), I analysed the resources and competencies(Appendix 3) ,the value chain (Appendix 3),the Cultural Web(Appendix 5). To find out the influence of stakeholders on the company I applied Power/Interest to the company and finally analysis of strengths,weaknesses ,opportunities and threats to the company(SWOT Analysis-Appendix 7) provide with clear idea about the strategic position of M&S.

The five generic competitive strategies are low-cost provider, broad differentiation, focused low-cost, focused differentiation strategy, and best-cost provider strategy. According to the textbook, “a company’s competitive strategy deals exclusively with the specifics of management’s game plan for competing successfully” (Gamble, 93).

These fishermen who are perhaps the first in line of the supply chain would know best how to promote sustainability and save these seafood from extinction. However, many of their may lack the expertise or capital to take these initatives. Walmart can have programs where they reward their suppliers who come up with innovative ideas to promote sustainability. These ideas should also be supported and funded by

Due to increasing environmental imbalances, it is necessary for firms to achieve competitive advantages in the area of environmental convergence as well. Wal-Mart is putting continuous efforts from a long time for environment sustainability and energy conservation. It also received Aspen Institute Energy and Environment award for Corporate Energy Efficiency in 2009. Here are a few steps that Wal-Mart has taken to encourage environmental sustainability:

“Always low prices”, is the first thing you think of when you think about one of the most successful companies around the world, Wal-Mart. For years they stand as a well know company due to their everyday low prices and variety of products. Their mission statement is “Saving people money so that they can live better”. They have chosen their mission statement wisely yet there is a lot of controversy when it comes to this International Company.

Wal-Mart was founded by businessman Sam Walton in 1962 as a small retail store in Arkansas, USA. From there it has grown to become the largest retail giant in the world. Ranked by Forbes 2000 list for 2011 as the 18th largest public corporation in the world, Wal-Mart is the highest revenue generating public entity in the world as of 31st January 2011, with gross revenue of 422 billion US Dollars (Walmart Annual Report, 2011). It is also noted for being the largest private employer in the world having just over 2 million employees serving in 8500 stores, in 15 different countries, under 55 different names, worldwide. (Daniel, 2010)

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. helps individuals around the globe spare cash and live better - at whatever time and anyplace - in retail locations, online and through their cell phones. Every week, more than 245 million clients and individuals visit our almost 11,000 stores under 65 flags in 28 nations and e-trade sites in 11 nations. With financial year 2015 net offers of $482.2 billion, Wal-Mart utilizes 2.2 million partners around the world. (Wal-Mart Corporate) Wal-Mart is a superpower in the business world and has been that way for 50+ years. Understanding how it got to this point and how it has maintained its successful business model starts with its

Wal-Mart now has to rebuild their images, procedures on how they conduct business nationwide and how the use ethical business practices. The New York time article reported, “Wal-Mart announces new ethical and environmental principles complete by 2012”. (Robinson, 2008)

Wal-Mart also has a green goal. It claims that their environmental goal is to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy, to create zero waste and to sell products that sustain our natural resources and the environment(Wal-Mart website 2008).