The company that I am writing about is Wal-Mart. This company is the largest retailer in the world. They compete both domestically and in several other countries around the world. Wal-Mart competes in three distinct retail spaces, as a discounter, as a warehouse club (Sam's Club) and as an online retailer, where Wal-Mart ranks fourth behind Amazon, Staples and Apple (Internet Retailer, 2012). The General Environment A PESTLE scan helps to understand the general environment in which the company operates. The different environments are the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental. For Wal-Mart, the two most important arguably are the economic and the technological. The economic environment is critical for Wal-Mart in several ways. The first is that the company is dependent on levels of discretionary income. Consumers often choose Wal-Mart for staples, but the company benefits from those consumers having money left over to make other, discretionary, purchases. For a company with slim margins like Wal-Mart, maximizing the average ticket is a critical success factor. That said, Wal-Mart also sees some benefit from economic downturn, as some consumers "trade down" to Wal-Mart from higher-priced stores in order to stretch their budgets further. There are other economic factors that are critical to Wal-Mart as well. Chief among them is the cost of buying goods from China, which in turn is dependent on the Chinese rate of inflation, and the rate of
If we want to analyse the political factors which impact upon the company we need to make a general view of the situation in the country. What are its law and requirements?
Wal-Mart is an American multinational retail corporation and one of the leading discount department retail stores (Wikipedia). It is the highest- grossing company in the United States (Fortune 2008a), and is by far one of the most successful companies worldwide. Wal-Mart offers a place to buy the majority of our goods under one roof like electronics, furniture, clothing, pharmacy, sports, food, books etc. Wal-Mart sells good at lower price than the others and this is even shown by its slogan “save money, live better”. It drives out smaller and sometimes even the expensive stores out of business due to its lower prices. Wal-Mart provides jobs for thousands of
Wal-Mart being one of the big company get its supplies cheaply and in a large quantity. This disables other supermarkets to compete with Wal-Mart. Where ever a Wal-Mart opens, many other stores close down because all their customers have been stolen by Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart doesn’t pay its employees enough money to support their families’ because the wages are not designed to support a family. Even though, it can afford wage increases they still don’t do it.
Many countries struggle with poverty and underemployment. Wal-Mart’s ability to give us bottom line pricing is greatly to do with the importation of products from developing countries at a lower cost in shipping as well as production. This is not rocket science for other companies here in America. Wal-Mart would not be the first company to try to pinch a penny by using foreign country products. America itself is doing foreign affairs overseas. This is part of
As Walmart uses standard and less number of component parts, it maintains low operation and production cost. It offers low wages to workers and leases sites in low rent areas as it tries to keep overhead expenses to a minimum. Goods are manufactured in countries where labor is very cheap. It controls production costs and limits costs that is involved in outsourcing, distribution and advertising to keep up with low operation costs in every aspect of its business.
customers unbeatable prices that their competitors find difficult to challenge. But in providing those “great deals” it deducts from other sources. Walmart directly imports from Asia and in turn Asia produces cheaply made items and sells to Walmart for a low cost. Thus,
Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world. The position Wal-Mart holds gives the company a large responsibility to contribute to the community that supports the stores. As an organization Wal-Mart owes its success to the stake holders of their business. Wal-Mart requires the community to continue business operations, Trevino and Nelson state that “a major stakeholder in business must be the communities of which corporations and other organizations are a part” (2011). Wal-Mart must consider the community happiness with their business decisions to remain profitable.
Evidently, Wal-Mart is not doing anything to differentiate itself from rivals. It gives no frills to self-service outlets always providing the cheapest prices. Through a well-built influence with suppliers, the company has gained the power to manipulate prices and amend manufacturing procedures thus wringing out more savings for its customers. All that the company does from the frequent calls to suppliers to doubling up execs in hotel rooms aimed at saving the
Like any business, Wal-Mart has to continually assess their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in order to continue to be competitive. Awareness by the executives to what is happening locally and globally will further the expansion of Wal-Mart.
The organization that I have chosen for the purpose of this corporate finance analysis is Wal-Mart. As is well known, Wal-Mart is the global market leader of
Wal-Mart’s sheer size gives it unrestrained economic power which allows it to drive down costs in the retail and manufacturing sectors and to enact its own standards with regards to its work force.
Wal-Mart is the leading retail firm in the United States that is ranked the first in Fortune 500 index because of its sound business practices and huge profits. The company has
Wal-Mart is the world's largest retail and departmental store chain. Having business operations in 27 countries with 69 different brand names, Wal-Mart is able to serve a huge number of customers per day. Wal-Mart is the fastest growing and the most successful retail brand in the world. The factors which make it the strongest brand in its industry include large customer base, sound financial strength, strong brand image, and huge supply chain network. Wal-Mart has certain weaknesses in its operations and business setup like low acceptability of certain products, high employee turnover, and less recognition of newly introduced brands. These weaknesses can be overcome by availing attractive opportunities from the market and investing more in the most profitable areas. Wal-Mart faces the biggest threat from its competitors and ever-changing customer preferences.
Wal-Mart is arguably the most dynamic corporation in the last 50 years in the United States, if not the world. Arising from its beginnings in Bentonville, Arkansas, it has grown to over 4,400 discount stores, super centers and corner markets worldwide. Wal-Mart continues to expand despite public criticism of its labor practices as well as complaints about their treatment of competitors. The many strengths of Wal-Mart, like their low cost production and marketing practices, will aid Wal-Mart as it continues to grow in the retail
PESTLE Analysis on United States help us to identify the systematic inputs to analyze the country performance in terms of Political Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental aspects and determine the objectives to make business decision and also it provide a view to forecast the business need for present and future perspectives. Each factors helps us to identify the current strength challenges and future benefits.