Walmart business operations and corporate structure

Wal-Mart SWOT

Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world serving customers and members more than 200 million times per week at more than 8, 416 retail stores, and 15 countries ( Fishman, 2003).. No other company in the retail industry comes close to Wal-Marts sales revenue. It is also a company that seems to fall into the love / hate category- people really loves the company or they really hate the company. It is admired for its continued growth and it is disliked mostly because of human resource issues and its dominate relationship with suppliers . Wal-Mart has been called a cult and a bully. Both names are true, it is a cult in that many employees and most executives hold a fierce loyalty to the company and it is a bully in that is forces suppliers to lower their prices or facing losing Wal-Mart account.

Strengths

Wal-Mart is a powerful retail brand . Wal-Mart established name brand that is identified with reasonable to cheap pricing and bargain pricing . Wal-Mart has grown substantially over recent years, and has experienced global expansion. For example: its purchase of the United Kingdom-based retailer ASAD . Wal-Mart has developed a loyal customer and employee base. This base is extremely loyal. They achieved this loyalty with good customer service for this customers, great pricing for the products they sell and by moving to areas of the country that are often ignored by other retailers . As for their employees they offer flexible hours, competitive wages, health insurance, and discounts for their purchases. Wal-Mart is able to buy bulk and gain huge bulk discounts that are not available to other organizations and is able to pass these discounts on to their customers. Wal-Mart deals in all types of goods: clothes, electrical items, jeweler, garden, automotive, toys, and therefore caters to a wide range of individuals and needs ( Fishman, 2003) .

Weaknesses

There is however weaknesses within this company found in the SWOT of Wal-Mart. For example, Wal-Mart buys is large bulk in order to keep their prices down. This need can lead to their inventory being a little unreliable. This means you might have to buy a certain item is a larger size, or you might not be able to purchase certain items that you normally would buy. Another weakness with Wal-Mart is in the past few years the organization has faced must litigation from employees accusing it of unfair employment activities -- especially from female employees which has given the bad reputation as an employer. Some of the goods sold by Wal-Mart from its Chinese suppliers in the past year have been marred by different cases of health and safety hazards (Neumark, Zhang, & Ciccarella, 2008). . The company is global, but has a presence in relatively few countries .

Opportunities

The current economic crisis has decreased the disposable income of many individuals and thus has caused many individuals and households to lower their expectations and to shop for bargains, thus Wal-Mart stands to gain in such a situation. The inflation in the economy is on the decline and the economy is on t he brink of deflation thus it may mean that Wal-Mart is able to provide its customers with increased bargains. Many retail organizations are going out of business due to the reduction in disposable incomes. This can help Wal-Mart by increasing its customer base due to the bargains that is can provide to customers. By providing customers with bigger bargains it will encourage the customer to shop at Wal-Mart.