Walmart Swot Analysis

It can be served as a competitive advantage, which attracts more customers shifting from Amazon’s online retailer competitors into buying their products, thus increasing the market share.

In many states and towns across the United States Dollar General is a household name. The first Dollar General store opened in Springfield, Ky. on June 1, 1955, as a wholesale business in Kentucky, to dispose of a large quantity of lingerie. Their concept was simple no item in the store would cost more than one dollar. The idea became a huge success for J.L. Turner and his son Cal Turner Sr., other stores were quickly converted. By 1957, annual sales of Dollar General’s 29 stores were $5 million. J.L. passed away in 1964. Dollar General History (n.d.). Four years later, the company Cal Turner Jr. co-founded went public as Dollar General Corporation, posting annual sales of more than $40 million and net income in excess of $1.5 million. In 1977, Cal Turner Jr., the third generation Turner, succeeded his father as president of Dollar General. Cal Turner Jr. directed the company until his retirement in 2002. Today Dollar General is a leading discount retailer now have 13,000 stores in 43 states. The company remains true to their humble ethic of hard work and friendly customer service exemplified by the founding family.

Some main strengths of Trader Joe’s are the strong brand image, their employees, organic and private label products, customer loyalty, and offered unique products. Trader Joe’s strong brand image helps them to attract and retain more customers. Their private labels are named according to the background and nationality of food. They offered an extensive line of private label items with brand names such as Trader Joe’s, Trader Ming’s, Trader Jose, Trader Giotto. Due to their strong brand image, they established themselves as a leading retailer of food and non-food items in the US. Americans ranked Trader Joe’s overall as No. 1 retailer in 2013 (Ager & Roberto, 2014). Trader Joe's offered unique and high-quality products from different countries which attract customers to try new items and stocks of 4,000 items, 80% of which bear one of its own brand names. Trader Joe's describes itself as "your neighborhood grocery store" (Wikipedia, Trader Joe’s). Trader Joe’s claimed that 80% of its customers had attended college. The company described its target market as “intelligent, educated, inquisitive individuals” and they reach this customer by opening store among well-educated residents (Ager & Roberto, 2014). Their customers are too loyal towards their brand image so they keep coming back. Instead of targeting all customers, they need to target new customers in order to grow their business and to keep being a leader in the retail industry in the US. And also, their employee are valuable assets of the company, who led them towards the further growth of the company, therefore they are treated fairly and trained to provide the nice and friendly service to Trader Joe’s customers. Almost most of the people want to work at Trader Joe’s because they pay more than minimum wage and higher compare to other retail stores. New part-time hires earned $12 per hour and full-time employees earned approximately $50,000 per year which is above minimum wages. Plus, they contribute 15.4% of employee's salary towards retirement Saving. Furthermore, they offer good health and others benefits even to part-time employees (Ager & Roberto, 2014).

The main competitors in the industry are all small to medium and large sized purveyors of organic foods. The major threat comes from Whole Foods Market. This firm is best positioned to compete and control a sizable market share due to its growth strategy. Much of Whole Foods Market inventory is a result of mergers and acquisitions of small, independent retailers of organic foods and specialty products (Whole Foods Market History, n.d.). Our competitors that we must pay the closest attention are Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s. Although Whole Foods Market has a merger and acquisitions growth strategy; Trader Joe’s surpasses Whole Foods Market in sales—$1,734 versus $934 per square foot respectively; due to higher product costs and failure

‘We believe that the principal competitive factors in our retail businesses include selection, price, and convenience, including fast and reliable fulfilment. Additional competitive factors for our seller and enterprise services include the quality, speed, and reliability of our services and tools, as well as customers’ ability and willingness to change business practices’ (Amazon10-K report 2015).

CVS and Walgreens continue to fight as top competitors in a growing market. CVS has over 7,000 stores nationwide and is expanding, as is Walgreens today with over 8,000 stores. This market isn’t particularly easy to enter as a major player in the market early because of all the work that needs to be put in to install as many brick and mortar stores or get that much of the market share in a short amount of time. It takes many years to be truly established as a pharmacy chain as Walgreens has experienced, being founded in 1901 and CVS being founded in 1963. This is why the barriers to entry are somewhat high because of the high fixed costs with the construction of brick and mortar stores.

Amazon online business has a more simple e-commercial delivery service than Walmart, However, amazon offers a wider variety of categories for the seller to listed product for an easier access, as well as a set prime shipping rate and collected by amazon instead of the seller. Also, Amazon allows their sellers the convenience of using UPC OR SKU for a quicker listing of products, and an easier lookup for the customer, whereas, Walmart e-commerce sale rose 17% in their last quarter, and currently testing a delivery subscription service that will similar to Amazon prime service (Wahba, 2015). According to Page (2015) suggests Amazon have a few advantages over Walmart such as the option of direct sale of merchandise from amazon, 1 click buying power, and having an accessibility and secure payment without leaving the Amazon website. (Page, 2015)

Walgreens is a company with many strengths. Their first strength is that they have over 250,000 employees. Having so many employees allows the company to provide maximum support to their users. This is also great because having so many people working reduces the unemployment number. The more people working in the United States, the better the economy will be. Their second strength is that Walgreens covers the US, Columbia and Puerto Rico with over 8,300 stores. Having this many stores allows for them to take up a large percentage of the market share. Being this dominant can also reduce the risk of total failure. Meaning, that if one store fails, the rest of the chain can be sufficient coverage for the loss of revenue. Their third strength is that they have a strong and effective distribution network.

The first weakness identified is an obvious lack of quality leadership by store and warehouse management. A quick review of a review website for Costco will show a significant number of reviews by current or former employees where they bring up their perceived problems with their managers (Glassdoor). Poor management-employee relationships seem to be a

JC Penney stores sell conventional merchandise including clothing as well as shoes and also an array of leased departs like Sephora, salons, optical centers and portrait studios. In 2006, JC Penney has begun the partnership with Sephora to lure in young female consumers and aims to have a total of 140 Sephora stores in JC Penney by 2017 (Kezar, 2017). Sephora has since then been one of the most profitable sector in JC Penney. In 2016, home appliances is also brought back to select stores for the first time in 30 years (Bailey, 2017). This includes the introduction of new appliance showrooms for the home department expansion. In addition to adding Sephora and home department to JC Penney, women’s apparel product has also revitalized by adding more products selection and improve shopping experience. During the first quarter of 2017, Nike products is added to all stores and adding Adidas products to more than 400 locations. JC Penney also expands footwear and Boutique+ brand which is a plus-sized women’s wear to cater more audience(Kezar, 2017).

Inimitable (costly to imitate) - Best Buy has a lot of retail locations in the US which makes it very easy for consumers to get help purchase electronics. Also, because they have so many locations this makes it easy for customers to get help.

Walmart, which is a multinational retail company is based in the US. It majorly deals with selling groceries and general merchandise. The company has developed a well organized planning method that is used to analyze and evaluate the opportunities and threats, strengths and weaknesses detected in a particular business venture. The method is known as Swot analysis. Despite the strengths approved, there is an existence of certain weaknesses which have been found to be existing in the Swot analysis of the company. Some of the weaknesses include; (1) employee turnover, which is high, (2) negative publicity, (3) little differentiation (4) labor related lawsuits, and (5) inappropriate marketing aspects (Dess, 2012).

The Wal-Mart business strategy on the philosophy of "everyday low prices" for the company. In other words, Wal-Mart is seeking labor cost leadership strategy has enabled economies of scale obtained by the company in a great extent. Effective use of the channel online sales contributes to the level of cost-efficiency of retail operations and about 75 percent of sales come from non-walmart.com store inventory [6] [11] .

In marketing and sales, if a customer has ordered from Amazon before, Amazon knows what type of products that customer purchases. For example a customer buys a product that is at a low price, so Amazon will suggest similar products that have that same price range. This also applies when the products are at a high price. They also offer free deliveries depending on how much they spend and discounts are available which varies with suggested product mixes. In services, Amazon offer a 30 day returns policy if customers are unhappy or an error has occurred with the product. This makes the company more reliable because if they sort their customers problems efficiently then the customers will remain loyal in the future.

I should say, the quality of their product is just in average and their price is fair. There are many other elements that combined to make it success. First of all, is the company's image. They suggest environmental friendly from time to time. All their products are "Against animal testing" and they even picked green as their logo colour. You will be surprised how much time and money the company contributed into the social, community as well as our environment.