Business Plan for Wal-Mart Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Business Plan for Wal-Mart - Essay Example There are another 1309 stores in 10 other countries. These prices are obtained through the massive buying power of the firm and tight contracts with the suppliers, by the relatively low average wages paid to employees, by the streamlined business model and by continual fine -tuning of strategy. This attracts customers: Wal-Mart commands about 30 per cent of the US market for household staples such as toothpaste and sells 15 - 20 per cent of all CDs, Video and DVD. It is now becoming a force in book retailing as well. The firm was started by Sam Walton, who focused on locating large stores in rural areas while rivals built in cities and suburbs. The typical new Wal-Mart I now a 'Supercenter' that sells groceries and general merchandise in a store with an area of about four football fields. Wal-Mart has about 1400 of these supercenters in the United States. Wal-Mart has a great impact on suppliers and consumers. Due to the huge demand of Wal-Mart stores, suppliers are bound to stick to it only. Consumers get all the household items at a relatively low prices. To get the goals of any organization in certain intensity there are some issues involved. These issues, consists of necessary business, technology and human factors, are called Critical Success Factors. Firstly, a company has to focus on its business environments and secondly, it must be examined that what kind of risks have to face during the implementation cycle of business strategy (Aram, 1976), because the CSF is very much reliant on business's position. Several other CSF can be identified for specific circumstances. It is necessary that the basic features of the business like cost, quality of the product, services will not be affected negatively after entering into the marketplace Company must maintain a solid and comprehensive strategy of business The business of the company must have a complete support of its top management The infrastructure of the business must be complete and comprehensive The employees of the company are well trained Company's pricing policy not affected by its business The expectations of the customers must be taken care of Personal and 1-1 attention to all customers Strategic Planning: The strategic choice really consists of answering questions about competition - that is how the firm will compete to achieve its mission and goals (Daft, 1989). While these decisions are important, strategic decision makers often pay less attention to the 'with what will we compete' issue, resulting in poor strategic decisions (Galbraith & Kazanjian, 1986). For example, Pepsico in the 1980s acquired the fast-food chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut in an effort to increase its customer base. However, it failed to recognize adequately the differences between its existing workforce and that of the fast-food industry as well as its ability to manage such a workforce. One recent study in the United States of 115 strategic business units within Fortune 500 corporations found that between forty nine and sixty nine percent of the companies had some link between Human Resource Management and the strategic planning process (Fisher & Dowling, 1999) however, the level of li nkage varies and it is important to understand the different