Strategic Thinking for Wal-Mart business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Strategic Thinking for Wal-Mart business - Essay ExampleAccording to Altier (1991, p.21), to persist in tomorrows increasingly combative world, companies be going to adopt a modus operandi that is approach to be known as strategic mentation. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is one of those successful industries that argon using strategic thinking to achieve competitive advantage within the retailing industry. According to a retail consultant Patricia Pao, in successful retailing, its usually 10% of a great idea and 90% execution, but at Wal-Mart 90% goes into strategic thinking and just 10% execution at the store level (cited in Gogoi, n.d.). The main thrust of this paper is to examine and analyze the role and impact of strategic thinking for the competitive options of Wal-Mart. 2.0 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Wal-Mart is one of the successful retailers in terms of sales volume, revenue, and grocery share. This 40-year old company was founded by surface-to-air missile Walton in 1962, and it domin ated the local market of the United States and other countries. Wal-Mart began to trade in the New York telephone line Exchange under the ticker symbol NYSE WMT and became one of the most reliable stocks because its investment take chances is not alarming. The business is operating globally, and its top competitors include Target Corporation, Costco Wholesale, and Carrefour. Wal-Mart net sales in 2008 ($373.8), 2009 ($401.1) and 2010 ($405.0) are growing at lower rates, and its return on investment (ROI) is not changing nor growing at 19.3% (Walmart 2010 Annual Report, n.d.a). These figures only indicate that Wal-Marts performance in the past years is struggling caused by ineffective plans and techniques. Aside from internal defects, the sluggish growth can also be attributed to external elements much(prenominal) as intense competition (local & international) and economic instability caused by recession. As Wal-Marts life pedal gets into the maturity stage, the number of powerfu l competitors has increased because the rate of sales and profits are high however, the boilersuit growth of the industry is at a very slow-paced manner. Cost at this level is lesser because of refinement and scale economies, but promotional activities need to be uplifted to make customers more knowledgeable to the highest degree the product and service offerings. In fact, Wal-Mart executives have doubled their advertising expenses this year just to reach a broad group of consumers (Martin, 2011). Furthermore, Wal-Mart has experienced the most intense competition, which in turn has lowered its sales and market share. However, it remained as the worlds largest corporation based on the Global cholecalciferol and Fortune 500 annual ranking despite poor sales and market share (DuBois, 2011). In addition, it is also recognise as the most admired company because it produced a wide variety of product and services, highest-quality service to customers, and offered the low prices of ret ail goods. CEO Bill Simon has freely admitted to Wal-Marts missteps in the past, which included prematurely removing profitable products, likewise aggressive rollbacks, and poor relationships with merchants (Sun, 2010). Thus, to regain its market share and high record sales, executives have concentrated on seeking and developing new approaches through strategic thinking. They go back to the basic, but this time they are more observant to their environment and turn into an out-of-the box thinker. They have gathered as much