Essay Sample on Business Level and Cooperation Level Strategies

Introduction

Business-level strategy refers to how a company competes alongside other organizations successfully in a specific market. It deals with the various decisions relating to the choice of goods, recognizing and meeting the client needs, creating a competitive advantage over the rivals as well as using or coming up with new opportunities. Walmart business level strategy is primarily based on the every day low prices principle of the organization. It means that Walmart assumes a cost leadership approach that is made possible through the economies of scale that the company enjoys a significant extent. The company effectively uses the online sales platforms which significantly adds to the degree of cost-efficiency of the company's retail operations. Approximately three-quarters of the sales that Walmart makes through its online distribution channels arise from the non-store accounts.

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Further, from time to time, Walmart engages in various strategies including continuous improvement of its range of products. The other approach the company actively uses include access and price adjustments. Walmart makes every effort to provide a wide choice of branded items at the most affordable rates. Each week up to about 100 million people visit a Walmart shop from different locations in the world (Walmart, 2019). The company has 3,200 stores across the United States and another 1,100 units in other regions including the United Kingdom, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Germany and Korea (Walmart, 2019). In addition to the pricing strategy, the company offers its clients the opportunity to select the channel they deem the most convenient to make their purchases successfully.

Besides, Walmart has invested in a seamless distribution system that ensures the company's clients receive their orders in time without any delays. Wal-Mart ships up to 85 percent of all the products that it stocks using the company's distribution mechanism (Nguyen, 2017). On the other hand, most of Walmart's competitors supplied their respective retail stores with an average of less than 50 percent of the goods through their distribution systems (Nguyen, 2017). While most of the competitors relied on outsourcing the trucking services that they need, Walmart uses its fleet of vehicles. Walmart has a fleet of vehicles that is made up of over 12,000 trailers and 3,000 trucks that the business uses as part of its distribution system (Walmart, 2019). This effective distribution system is the most vital to the long term success of the company as it allows the business to supply all its stores in good time to meet the customers' needs.

Walmart has managers that engage in planning the corporate-level strategy of the company. The other level of strategic planning that the company undertakes include function-level strategy and business-level strategy. The purpose of the functional approach is to serve the general organization strategy to allow for efficient and effective implementation of the corporate policy. In terms of performance management, the organization has created both high job designs and demanding standards. From the training human resource development perspective, Walmart uses the term associates to refer to its staff (Basker, 2007). The business often encourages its managers to consider themselves as servant leaders. The company promotes the managers to serve other individuals and stay on course towards realizing the values of the organization. The human resource strategy plays a critical role in corporate level towards the long term success of the firm because employees are at the center of the business performance in a competitive industry.

Walmart's competitive strategy involves dominating all the sectors where the organization does business. In this regard, the company measures its levels of success by examining the sails and the dominance that it attains over its competitors. Walmart uses various strategies including selling its products at more affordable rates to outdo its rivals and further expand. The company uses a model that involves putting up more stores, expanding the already existing stores and getting into other retail sectors. All the moves the company makes are aimed at growing the profit margins and dominating the competitors to the level that some opted out of the competition.

Walmart operates in a unique competitive environment. The company's primary source of competition arises from other retailers, warehouse clubs as well as supermarkets. Currently, the retail industry is enormous and is still going through lots of changes and growth (Basker, 2007). The nature of the industry does the top businesses including Walmart to compete both locally and globally. Therefore, the company is facing significant competition on many things including prices, the sizes of the stores, company image, the organization of store and the location. One of the critical features of the market is the economies of scale which makes the leading retailers to incorporate various functions such as shipping, manufacturing, and advertising (Nguyen, 2017). The integration of such services makes the top businesses have a significant competitive advantage over the small scale companies that may offer competition in the industry.

Conclusion

In general, products retailing business, Walmart faces competition from Kmart and Target. Apart from the general merchandise retail competitors, Walmart faces retail competition from superstores such as Bath and Beyond. A research conducted on the Wal-Mart's competitive market revealed that most of the customers prefer the store over its competitors because it offers lower prices, improved variety as well as excellent quality (Nguyen, 2017). Satisfying the needs of the customers is a critical economic element of any competitive environment. When it comes to the warehouse sector, Sam's Club which is a division of Walmart faces stiff competition from Costco. Even though Costco operates fewer warehouses compared to Walmart, the business attains much higher sales and revenue. Costco consumers purchase goods from Costco more frequently compared to the rate at which Sam's Club clients buy from Sam's Club (Basker, 2007). Further, Costco consumers on average spend more money at Costco Stores.

The dominance of Costco in the warehouse segment is due to the better innovation. The business offers a diverse range of luxury products and was among the first to trade in both meat, and various fresh produces. The entry of the business into this line of trade was critical since it is a primary factor in analyzing competitors in a given industry. In addition to the competition that Walmart faces from supermarket retailers. The grocery industry has many businesses competing for the same consumers, but Walmart provides a serious threat to most of the small and large scale retailers. Walmart uses lower prices as a strategy to remain on top of the competitors which makes it difficult for the supermarket retailers to stay afloat. Considering the strategy at all levels, price adjustment is likely to be most successful in the long term.

References

Basker, E. (2007). The causes and consequences of Wal-Mart's growth. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(3), 177-198. DOI: 10.1257/jep.21.3.177.

Nguyen, T. (2017). Wal-Mart's successfully integrated supply chain and the necessity of establishing the Triple-A supply chain in the 21st century. Journal of Economics and Management, 29(3), 103-117. DOI: 10.22367/jem.2017.29.06.

Walmart. (2019). About us. Retrieved from Walmart: https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story