How Does Montag Feel About His Job In Fahrenheit 451?

Company History

Walmart began with a simple purpose: “Saving people money so they can live better.” Sam Walton’s vision was to provide customers with all the products they needed but at the lowest price possible. Walton opened his famous “Walton’s 5 & 10” store in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 1950, where he put his business ideas into place. In 1962, he opened the first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas, and his ideas and business began to grow. Throughout the next decade, Walmart stores spread throughout towns, and the company was incorporated in 1970. Walmart Inc. began to expand to different states and countries and is now the world’s largest company by revenue. According to statista.com, Walmart’s net sales worldwide for 2018 is 495.76 billion U.S. dollars. Walmart Inc.’s gross profit for 2018 is $126.94 billion. Walmart’s product selection includes a wide variety of produce and general merchandise. The bigger stores may also have an optical center, a photo center, a bank, a garden center, or even a Tire & Lube Express.

Walmart’s best-selling items vary throughout the states and countries. For example, the most-bought item in Arkansas is chocolate, and the most-bought item in New Mexico is cat food. Overall, the best seller for Walmart is bananas. According to Walmart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan, “Customers love bananas because they’re easy, healthy food to pack and eat and are very affordable. Kids also love bananas, and so a lot of customers are probably thinking of their children.” As advances in technology are made, customers’ needs have changed. Walmart meets these needs by providing customers with a variety of computers, gaming consoles, and other devices.

Key Management Team

Doug McMillon Carl Douglas McMillon was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1966. His family moved to Arkansas, where McMillan spent much of his childhood. He started his Walmart career as a teenager in the summer of 1984, working at one of the distribution centers. McMillon graduated from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor’s degree in 1989 and went on to earn his Master of Business Administration from the University of Tulsa in 1991. Before becoming a CEO, he worked as an assistant manager, buyer, merchandiser, and general manager. In 2005, Doug was promoted and became the president and CEO of Sam’s Club. In 2009, he was moved and led Walmart’s international division. In 2014, he was chosen to be Walmart’s CEO.

Doug McMillon still serves as Walmart’s CEO and president and has made several advances for the company. Greg Foran In 2014, Greg Foran became the president and chief executive officer of Walmart U.S., and he is responsible for about 4,600 stores and over 1 million associates. Foran has over 35 years of retail experience and was the president and CEO of Walmart Asia prior to his current position. Judith Mckenna “Judith McKenna is president and chief executive officer of Walmart International, a fast-growing segment of Walmart’s overall operations.

She leads more than 6,200 retail units and 777,000 associates across 27 countries.” Education Law degree from Hull University in England Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales accounting qualification at KPMG Honorary doctorate in law from Hull University. John Furner “John Furner serves as president and chief executive officer of Sam’s Club, a members-only warehouse club. A division of Walmart Inc., Sam’s Club had revenues of $57 billion for fiscal year 2016, 110,000 associates, and nearly 600 clubs. John started with Walmart as an hourly associate in 1993 and has held important roles in Walmart U.S., Sam’s Club, and Walmart International as an expatriate in China.”

Bachelor of science in marketing management from the University of Arkansas o Completed the High Potentials Leadership program Marc Lore “Marc Lore is president and chief executive officer of Walmart eCommerce U.S. He was appointed in September 2016 to lead U.S. e-commerce when his company Jet.com was acquired by Walmart Inc. In his role, he accelerates Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce growth and customer reach, leading Walmart.com and Jet.com.”

Locations and Facilities

Walmart has a total of 11 718 retail units. There are approximately 4,761 Walmart stores in the United States, and there are 597 Sam’s Clubs. One hundred twenty-nine distribution centers are also located in the United States. There are 6,360 Walmart stores internationally. Walmart continues to expand by opening new stores in the United States as well as in other countries.

SWOT Analysis: Strengths and Weaknesses

On one side, Wal-Mart has very powerful strengths that allow it to be the retail market leader nowadays. Some of them are the following. The scale of operations: Wal-Mart is the largest retail company in the world. With more than $400 billion in revenue and more than 10,000 stores, it exercises great buyer power on suppliers to reduce prices. Also, its size allows the company to benefit from economies of scale, which in time conduce to a lower price of products for the final consumer.

The retailer sells a bigger variety of products than any of its retail competitors. Grocery, health and wellness, apparel, entertainment, electronics, and many other products are sold on its shelves. Also, it is remarkable the fact that Wal-Mart sells both brand products and own label products that are even cheaper. Competitive in information systems: The retailer was the developer of many technological and innovative advances, such as the bar code. Lately, the company has launched an app called Scan & Go, with which users can scan and bag merchandise and pay at a self-checkout kiosk after presenting the data from their phones.

These kinds of facts have given the firm a leadership position in the retail market. The company saves money due to its extensive information systems that track orders, inventory levels, sales, and many other related data in real-time. All the information is immediately processed, and with it, strategic decisions are made, so they are likely to be very efficient. The effective management of the supply chain leads to cost savings that are paramount for the competitive advantage of the firm. In fact, logistics is one of the most important Wal-Mart keys to success.

Cost leadership is another one of the firm strengths. The retailer has placed in the market as the lower cost option for consumers. When every person thinks about a cheap place to get their groceries, they immediately associate the term cheap with Wal-Mart, and this is in part thanks to their slogans “Always low prices” (old one) and “Save money. Live better” (current one). The retailer sells products at very low prices than competitors do, builds warehouse-style superstores that contain an extensive range of products and doesn’t offer extra benefits or services. Wal-Mart International operations are also a strength factor in the way that most U.S. Wal-Mart competitors only operate in U.S. territory. However, the retailer earned about $135 billion in sales in 2013 from their foreign businesses.

On the other hand, there are some weaknesses on which Wal-Mart should work. The company has been involved in labor-related lawsuits due to its disrespect towards employees while trying to cut costs. The firm is criticized for poor conditions, unpaid overtime work, low wages, and female discrimination. Reputation has been damaged, and many people reject to work for the retailer for those reasons. Wal-Mart does not follow a differentiation strategy, as some of its competitors do. It can cost it to lose some customers if it comes to the time when customers have more income and do not make their purchases only considering prices. If that happens, the cost leadership will be ineffective, and the retailer will need to create a new strategy offering something other than a cheap item.

High turnover of employees is another weak point in the retailer’s history. The company loses many employees who find other jobs with better labor conditions or high skill, and so they quit. This costs the company a great amount of money as it must train new staff very often. Negative publicity also tarnishes the corporate reputation of Wal-Mart, which is criticized for bribery practices and poor work conditions. Another weakness is the declining prices and decreasing margins. With the increase in operational efficiencies and import operations of Chinese goods in the U.S. market, Wal-Mart has seen how its gross margins become lower in certain product categories due to this price decline.

External Analysis: Opportunities

If we investigate the market in which Wal-Mart works, we will see some opportunities for the company to grow and improve, but also some threats that need to be faced. Some of the opportunities that Wal-Mart can benefit from are the following. A good chance for the firm is to keep on investing in International operations because they grew at a faster rate than sales in the home market. Foreign markets offer new opportunities for Wal-Mart’s growth and provide new experiences for the company as it operates quite differently abroad than in the home market. Specifically interesting are the emerging markets. The retailer already operates in Brazil, Mexico, China, and India, but it should increase its presence in these markets to sustain future growth. It has demonstrated the popularity of the own label products of the firm as their sales grew 40% in the last ten years. That’s why Wal-Mart could increase the number of private label products and earn higher profit margins.

Also, there is an increasing concern about health issues. Customers are willing to buy healthier food in stores, so Walmart could increase the range of healthy groceries to earn more out of this part of the business. Another chance lies in online shopping. The current trend shows that the online retail sector grew by 4.7% in the U.S. during the year 2013. Due to the size of the company, it has an advantage in expanding and getting a good presence in the online market. In fact, the firm is already working in this field, and it offers convenience to pick up the goods ordered online in its physical stores, offering at the same time even lower prices than at the store and without any additional charge. Wal-Mart has an opportunity to enter the banking industry.

Every month, the retailer receives about $140 million in payments through debit cards, credit cards, and electronic check transfers. Establishing its own bank, Wal-Mart could save cash on third-party electronic payment processing. Another opportunity for the retailer to improve its image is to put efforts into social welfare. Green ethics are, in fact, becoming part of Wal-Mart’s values. Saving on electricity by creating self-sufficient supercenters, reducing greenhouse emissions, making shorter shipments to save on oil, and investing in renewable energies are some examples. In fact, according to the EPA, Wal-Mart is the third-largest U.S. corporate consumer of green power, renewable sources with high environmental benefits.

Market Challenges and Threats Faced by Wal-Mart

As well as opportunities, the company must deal with less beneficial market factors and threats that must be faced to keep its market share. There is a conflict of interest when Wal-Mart tries to improve its operations to become a greener company. It is true that Wal-Mart has room for improvement, but given its size and business identity as a low-price retailer, it is hard to think how far the company can go in this scope. Industrially-produced goods, for example, pork meat, will be cheaper to produce and sell than from a grass-fed, free-range pig on a small ecologic farm. Nevertheless, the company is trying to work on this threat and is building sustainable facilities. Walmart has raised a goal to design a store that is 25% to 30% more energy efficient and will produce 30% less gas emissions. Increasing competitor’s power must be considered. Some competitors like Target, Costco, Amazon, and Tesco are putting huge efforts into eliminating the price differences that Wal-Mart enjoys.

The low prices are the main advantage of the firm, so if it happens, Wal-Mart will lose clients and will experience increased competition from them in the future. Another threat to face is the international barriers. Depending on the industry, regulatory compliance can be an obstacle when entering a new market and sometimes a long and cumbersome process. The resistance from local communities is another factor to face. Wal-Mart has a negative impact on local retailers as some of them lose their clients and end up closing their businesses after a couple of years Wal-Mart opens in the area. This affects not only the retailers but their families and the community. Another threat in international markets is that economies are changing quickly.

In the case of China, a country where Walmart buys nearly 80% of its merchandise, the government is trying to raise the value of the national currency, the Yuan. In this case, it happens, the retailer will have to pay more for the products coming from its Chinese suppliers. The last of the threats is that Wal-Mart has saturated the market as it is often competing with itself. It is estimated that there is a fair amount of cannibalization going on when Wal-Mart opens a store. In some cases, 20 percent of a new store’s sales come from existing Wal-Mart stores.

The Nutrition APP Opportunity

Walmart is a company that prides itself on providing a wide variety of products to satisfy all its customers’ needs. With such an extensive selection of products, finding customer-specific items can be somewhat of a daunting task. Imagine you have Marleigh, a customer with specific dietary restrictions. While Walmart does have a small Special Dietary Needs section, such as “Gluten Free,” “Paleo,” or “Vegetarian,” the selections are very broad. Marleigh knows that she can’t purchase any products containing maize, dairy, or yellow dye number 5. Where is the section for that? It simply doesn’t exist. Marleigh and other customers with diet restrictions would have no other option but to read the ingredients on every individual product they have a possible interest in. Trying to find the right item would not only be time-consuming but can also be incredibly frustrating. We want to offer a solution.

Product Overview and Key Participants

With the Walmart Nutrition App, employees and customers would have the opportunity to apply filters to their item searches. These filters would eliminate items containing specific ingredients, such as maize, dairy, and yellow dye number 5, leaving only food items the customer could actually purchase without anaphylactic reactions. The Nutrition App would be directly linked to the store-specific inventory, allowing consumers to find their desired products quickly. It would eliminate limitations on diet-restricted consumers and also give them peace of mind when making purchases. Upgrade paths could include adding the following filter options: number of calories, low carbohydrate, high protein, low sugar/sugar-free, etc.

Key participants would be based on consumer needs. The app would be a huge benefit when conducting research about product expansion. After reviewing the different consumer search histories, Walmart could then identify critical suppliers and distributors needed to help expand its product selection. Once a more specific need for products has been identified, the last step would be finding the right participants to fulfill those needs.

Pricing, Marketing, and Sales Approach

The pricing for the Nutrition App itself would be free to consumers. The increase in profit would be from customers having more purchasing options that they are aware of. The app would allow them to see everything that is available to them based on their specific needs that they may not have known about in the past. Marketing Key Messages: Many people have specific dietary needs, goals, and restrictions. An app or additional function to the existing Walmart app/site may greatly benefit those people if they are able to search for food by filtering out specific ingredients and/or nutrition information. Marketing Activities As this proposal focuses on a product that will almost exclusively be utilized using technology, digital marketing would be the best course of action.

Walmart already allows people to order food online to pick up. Putting ads on the grocery order pages advertising the ability to filter (out) foods by ingredients would be a start. Additional advertisements could include appealing to the consumers by presenting relatable scenarios. One such scenario could include a short video advertisement demonstrating a customer with specific dietary restrictions, such as colored dyes, and being able to easily and conveniently filter out foods that have those ingredients in a few short seconds.

Sales Approach: The product we’re selling is a function of an existing service. We would sell it by making it useful enough that more people start opting to order groceries online. Online consumers generate income as they visit the site as well, so that’s additional income as more consumers start using the site because of convenience.

References

1. Walmart Corporate. (2022). About Walmart. Walmart Inc.
2. Statista. (2019). Walmart’s net sales worldwide 2018. Statista Inc.
3. Buchanan, B. (2022). Walmart’s best-selling items in the U.S. Walmart Press Center.
4. Walmart Corporate. (2022). Our Leadership. Walmart Inc.