沃尔玛战略分析(english).doc

Strategy Analysis of Wal-martWal-mart is the giant of the retail world, its main market orientation strategy is “everyday low price”, with which caused Wal-mart win the civilian consumers favor, obtained remarkable achievement, and set up the enterprises image “the high quality with reasonable price” in peoples mind. It developed from a small store to the top of 500 leading enterprises in the world from The Fortune, and its commercial myth spread around all of the world just overnight. As the follows, I will show you the strategy of Wal-mart and do some analyzing. I.A brief introduction of Wal-martWal-mart was founded by Sam Walton in Arkansas in 1962, which is the legend in American retail field. After forty years of development, Wal-mart has become the largest private employer in America and the largest retail chain enterprise in the world. At present, Wal-mart has more than 6,600 stores in the global market and more than 18 million employs totally which distributed in 14 countries worldwide. There are about 1.75 million customers shopping here every week, making Wal-mart become the number one of 500 top enterprises in the world. In 1991, Wal-marts annual sales breakthrough $40 billion, making it become one of the worlds largest retail enterprises. According to the classification list of the nationwide service sector from American magazineThe Fortunein May 1994, Wal-marts sales hit 673.4 billion in 1993, increasing over 11.8 billion than the previous year, more than Sesas which is the number one in 1992, and topped the grattan of nationwide retail. In 1995, Wal-marts sales kept increasing and created a world record in retail, realizing 936 billion us dollars in annual sales, which at the fourth place among American largest enterprises list in magazine The Fortune. As a matter of fact, Wal-marts annual sales equals to the summery of all department stores sales across the United States, and it still maintained a strong momentum of development. Wal-mart has 2133 Wal-mart stores, 469 members-only warehouse clubs and 248 Wal-mart shopping plazas so far, and it across America, Mexico, Canada, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, China, Indonesia etc places. We have to say it writes a miracle in retail with rapid development just in a few decades.II.The company strategy environment analysis2.1 The external environment analysis2.1.1 The general environment Demographic segmentAlthough each country adopted different population control policy according to their national conditions, however, the global population is still in rising status from macroscopic environment view, especially for developing countries, their total population is large and the rate of the population growth is faster than developed countries; And with the process of urbanization, urban resident population is appearing concentration trend. Growing population and centralization of the population living environment provide huge opportunity for retail. Economic segmentThe world peaceful developing environment and the proactive fiscal policy make the world economy develops steadily in quickly and well state, per capita purchasing ability strengthens, so peoples requirement of life level become higher and higher, the same as peoples consumption level. Therefore, driving to storms to go shopping has become usual landscapes on Wal-mart ave. Sociocultural segmentWal-mart emphasizes the principle of good faith and moral values: I for one, one for all. Wal-mart located customers as “the companys biggest boss”, and they put up many principles stood in the customer view, for example, everyday low pricesmile from three meters distance, 200% satisfaction etc. Three meters smile principle requires employees to smile to customers from less than three meters, besides, Wal-mart requires employees to answer customer questions seriously, and never say “I dont know”, Wal-mart has an unwritten rule internal, that is the only state that allows the reason of late is “customer service”. 200% satisfaction principle manifested in the fresh-eating department, Wal-mart assurances to cancel the orders and give you a free gift if the homemade food meets any quality problem. Quality social cultural environment with high quality retain a lot of loyal customers for Wal-mart. Technological segmentThe development of science and technology, especially the development of Internet technology accelerated the development of retail process, advanced science and technology allows remote communication logistics applications information collection and data processing become possible, and enhance work efficiency. For example, Wal-mart is the first one to realize its computer logistics network monitoring 24 hours internal in the world, making purchase inventoryorder the goodsdistribution and sales integration, reducing a lot of unnecessary waste time, speeding up the logistics cycle. Global segmentGlobal economy integration accelerated the pace of transnational trade development, promoted the economic development of the world. Wal-mart has stores and shopping plazas in many countries around the world, Wal-mart develops well even in a foreign country because of its successful localization image.2.1.2 The industry environment Threat of substitute productsSubstitute products are those have same function with specific market products. The price of the products is generally low, but while it put into the market, the price of the specific market products will ceiling only at a relatively low level, which limits the specific market benefits. For Wal-mart retail is concerned, its mainly alternative products faced are as follows: The vigorous development of catering industry. With the rapid development of social economythe enhancement of purchasing ability and life rhythm speeding up, more and more white-collar spend their spare time in catering industry, booming development of catering industry provides the quality services and good tasted food, such as yonghe soya-bean milk, and daniang dumplings, odie coffee, qiao jiangnan catering etc, which have a great impact on retail especially for supermarkets and department stores, so to Wal-mart although it take everyday low price strategy.The rapid development of network. Online consumption has become very common phenomena due to the rapid development of network technology. Especially for young people and women, they are more willing to spend their time on suffering the internet, they can choose and buy goods with lower prices just with a laptop computer and never leave home. On the network, a portion of the goods under customs duties avoid taxation and launched seconds kill activities so people do not need to pat long queues in the entity shop, door-to-door delivery convenient the audience customers. The hotel industry. At present many hotels sell other commodities in addition to providing food and lodging services, such as placing beverage, snacks, underwear, socks for sale internal, besides, because of the geographic location beautiful environment and abundant capital, the hotels are receiving more and more consumers. Bargaining power of suppliers Wal-marts purchase link adopts directly to the factoryunified purchaseassist suppliers to reduce costs and other ways to reduce the purchase costs, compared to other companies, Wal-mart do a good job in this respect.Adapt the way of purchasing directly to the factory. Many businesses takes consignment mode of operation to avoid business risks, while Wal-mart implements direct purchase policy, and take a fixed time never delay to the buyout accounts settlement practices. Wal-marts average cope with period is 29 days, while its competitor Kmart needs 45 days. According to Wal-mart own statistics, Wal-mart reduce the purchase cost of 2% - 6% with implementing direct purchase policy. Unified purchase cost. Wal-mart adapt purchasing from the center system and try to unified purchase by the headquarters of he central, particularly those of high visibility commodities in the worldwide sales, such as Coca-Cola, Eastman kodak film etc. Generally speaking, Wal-mart signing the whole year sales contract with suppliers at one time, it obtained the preferential price far higher than their peers because of its huge population.The way of assisting suppliers reduce product cost. Wal-mart through helping suppliers improve processimprove qualityreduce labor costsshare the information system etc, and improve the yield with assisting suppliers realize the lowest cost. Bargaining power of buyers The majority of consumers are sensitive to prices, and when we entered Wal-mart, the first sightseeing filled into our eyes must be the slogan everyday low prices, this sentence even printed on shopping bags of Wal-mart, the implement of the principle make Wal-mart lightning from numerous retail enterprises from the crowd. Threat of new entrantsLarge supermarket chain industry carries high barriers to entry. For large supermarket chain businesses, if he wants to succeed in a new market, the number of scale, namely storefront is a necessary condition. For large-scale rigidity requirement, also inevitable requires abundant capital amount. Therefore, large supermarket chain industry barriers to entry is high, and now almost all of the large retail companies are already carried out his business in mainland China, and there is almost no new entrants. So we can see that the potential industry entrants cant threat Wal-mart. Rivalry among competing firmsCompetition in domestic market. The current domestic famous brand have Shanghai lianhua, hualian, the bailan, suguo, the times, etc., they all want to get the leadership in Chinese retailing, now the competition is fierce.The competition of the international market. Along with Chinas reform and open up to the outside world policy, the accession to the WTO, more and more foreign capital enterprise deep into the native, such as metro, hymall group, aeon ltd., YangHuaTang ITO, they all focus on Chinese market and put china as their business priorities, even there are reports said that the foreign retail enterprise already occupied 60 per cent of the domestic market, as the representative of the supermarket, and these are still actively expand their territory .2.1.3 The competitor environmentWal-marts main rivals have carrefour and metro. Take Carrefour for example, it is the worlds second-largest retailer, which has 4000 chain stores in France and accounting for 30% of retail market sales; In 31 countries with 9200 more stores, the most internationalized retail enterprises in the world. Carrefour is the largest retail in Spain, Portugal and Greece, while Wal-mart has no even a branch in these countries, carrefour preempted the 20% of the market share for its incomparable advantage in Brazil.2.2 The internal environment analysis 2.2.1 Resources Tangible resourcesFinancial resourcesWal-mart has the abundant capital as it is a world famous retailer enterprise, and its use of capital is very planning, using low-cost strategies, win formidable profits, as it appears in the development of Chinese market:year19601970198019901998sales $1.4 million$31 million $1.2 billion$26 billion$133.2billionprofits$112 thousand$1.2 million$41 million$1 billion$4.1 billionShop number9322761528Over 3000From the table we can see that Wal-mart is in the rapid expansion of the 50th consecutive years, and get on a higher level every 10 years, it still did not stop until today.Organizational resourcesWal-mart uses concise divisional organization, there are four divisions under the companys headquarters, the four divisions organize shopping plaza (including discount store managers), members-only warehouse club, international business and logistics business respectively. The division is under the management of two shops, which manage the shop location, open, stock, inventory, sales, finance, promotion, training, advertising, public relations and so on directly through four levels: the division President, regional CEO, the regional manager and the store manager.Physical resourcesWal-mart stores follow strategy of “saturation” in the expanding, requiring the distribution center to send the goods to the target shop in one day. Therefore, in order to distribute goods for 150-200 stores within one day, the distribution center address must conform to this strategy. Store, no matter how far the storms from the distribution centers, its location must maintain the transportation distance within a day, and then the region send the corresponding orders to branch distribution centers back.Technological resourcesEvery shop is an investment center, so its performance can be evaluated by for the proportion of profits and the inventory investment. All the shop sales, expenses and profit and loss data can be collectedanalysedtransmitted in time through the network. We can analyse these data according to the area, region, shops, stores in different departments and even the various types of every departments. Intangible resourcesHuman resources The dedication and teamwork spirit of its employees are the most unique advantage of Wal-mart, which benefit from Wal-marts human resources policies - keep talents, developing talents and recruiting talents. Wal-mart see their employees as their partners, they are the most precious resources of Wal-mart,Innovation resourcesWal-marts success largely due to the wise collocation of cutting-edge technology and logistics system, and Wal-mart practice it at least ten years earlier than most competitors. Wal-mart began using the computer to carry on the management in the early 1970s; In the early 1980s, they spent four billion dollars to buy commercial satellites, which realized the global networking; In 1990s, Wal-mart use the leading global positioning satellite (GPS) to control companys logistics, improve the efficiency of supply and win customers satisfaction and loyalty with speed and quality.Reputational resourcesWal-mart allways try their best on reducing advertising expenses in promotion goods, but they are very generous when donating to non-profit organizations and public welfares. Since 1983, Wal-mart donated $52 million for the charity called “joint road” in other states; Since 1988, Wal-mart raised $57 million to assist practicing a childrens TV program called “childrens miracle”, and it is one of the biggest sponsors; Walton is also actively in funding public and private schools, setting up special special scholarship, and helping Latin America students to Arkansas college, besides, he donates a certain proportion of turnover from his own brand “Sam American hits” as scholarship to students who study math, science and computer. Wal-mart attracted large quantities of target customers by establishing good public image and brand image.2.2.2 Capabilities Effective use of logistics management techniquesWal-mart can guarantee that the goods from the distribution center to any shop for no more than 48 hours, so Wal-mart can replenish the goods of each stores twice a week on the average, while the other retail shops fill a live every two weeks on average. Wal-mart saves both storage space and lower inventory cost by maintaining inventory less as far as possible. This benefits from Wal-marts dont stay delivery supply system: efficient distribution center, rapid transport system, advanced satellite networks and ranchising circulation organization. Effective and efficient management information systems4,000 stores globally can check each commoditys inventory, shelves and sales all inventory within an hour by the global network, and notify the train driver the latest information to adjust the best routes for delivery vehicle on the road. Motivating , empowering , and retaining employeesWal-mart will invite employees with ability and ideas to share their experiences on every Saturday morning rally, as a matter of fact, Wal-marts best and the most creative ideas are commonly from store employees, and those employees will win rewards and recognition, Wal-mart take a profit sharing, bonuses, stock fold buy way such manoeu-vre to enhance staffs creativity and initiative.2.2.3 Core competenciesWal-marts core competencies lie in its good business philosophy and enterprise culture, mainly embodied in the following five aspects: Cutting down the profits in order to sale more products. Wal-mart avoids middlemen and replenishes goods directly from the factory, get rid of the agent for sale from manufacturers in trade, and decline purchasing price lower from 2% to 6%. Wal-mart will refuse to cooperate if the manufacturer does not agree with the action. Customers satisfaction. The slogan “First, the customer is always right; second, if you have any questions, please refer to article 1.” can be seen in Many Wal-mart stores. They always put the customer in the first place, adhere to the principle of “ten feet attitude”: “I solemnly promise and announce, for every customer within the scope of my 10 feet, I will smile at them and greet with them, just like Sam help me as well.” Wal-mart requires employees to show their eight teeth when smile at customers. Innovating and pursuiting the excellence constantly. At the technical level, Wal-mart took very active investment in retail information system, and the earliest to use computer tracking inventory, EDI, barcode scanning and wireless gun. In management level, in order to adapt to the changing needs of the consumers, Wal-mart do locally business overseas, explore new retail mode continuously