Walmart-Module 3
Research and Development(JH)
Walmart is committed to improving in every phase of its company and research and development is included in that. According to Walmart Corporate “Seven leading research and development institutions were awarded a total of $4 million in grants to create new processes, ideas, and job creation that will foster America’s growing manufacturing footprint. The fund, which focuses on the development of domestic manufacturing with a specific goal of advancing the production or assembly of consumer products in the U.S., will provide a total of $10 million in grants over the next five years (Walmart Corporate).
The company had announced plans to set up an R&D centre in Bangalore, responsible for creating the next generation products and platforms for Walmart’s resources located in Bangalore would work in core R&D works, including new platform developments, analytics, big data and system integration (Reporter). The company’s strategy to provide the customers ‘anytime, anywhere’ access to its products through mobile devices, internet or at physical stores.e-Commerce business globally (Reporter).
Marketing and Sales(RM)
Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world with locations everywhere so they need to be able to reach multiple markets efficiently and as numerous styles of people because they want to appeal to as many people as price with their price saving practices. I think marketing is very beneficial to Walmart their commercials are fun and their slogan is very catchy and gets to the point “Save Money. Live Better.” There is an important focus as you can tell by their corporate philosophy being “we develop unique creative strategies to reach thousands of target markets around the world, delving deep into comprehensive research and collaborating with the best of the best in our industry to reach more people, more inventively and more effectively. Our Marketing team connects with consumers on an unprecedented scale.” Marketing budget - financial marketing plan that contains information about the costs of the company to conduct marketing activities and income from marketing activities. Marketing budget - it's spending on marketing research, to ensure the competitiveness of goods, information on communication with customers - advertising, sales promotion, exhibitions, fairs, organization of turnover and sales. Marketing budget allows us to analyze the level of planned and practically derived income from marketing activities planned and actual investment in marketing activities of the company, based on the analysis to build predictions, summarize, develop a marketing plan and plan investments in marketing to the next period. In a situation of limited financial resources, the leaders of many companies do not give due importance to marketing, finance, and marketing activities, particularly research on leftovers, trimming the marketing budget at every opportunity that the immediate negative impact on the performance of the whole enterprise. Walmart failed in keeping up with other companies. And now those companies are trying to kill the most famous retailer like a business sharks (Fool). If we take a close look at no further than its most recent quarterly report, we can see that earnings are declined for 13% (Fool). Marketing and Sales include the advertising, channel selection, product promotion, selling, product pricing, retail management, etc. The activities are performed to make sure that the products are transferred to the targeted customer groups. Marketing mix can be an instrument to take the competitive advantage to the target customers (Managementexchange.com). Porter suggested that going through the chain of organization activities will add more value to the product and services than the sum of added cost of these activities (Managementexchange.com).
Customer Service(RM)
Walmart customer service is not one of its strongest attributes within its company’s value chain. Low cost, low trained workers do not make for the most efficient workers and that is one of the reasons people are hesitant to go there. Consumer services go a long way in making people feel welcome and unfortunately Walmart isn’t the best company for this. Another reason why is because there is a lot of turnover in low level entry workers and the training is not intensive to go through. With little investment in employees if employees are not effective workers you can dismiss them and hire another employee. Many Walmart customers have been complaining about numerous facts such as: share valuation, long time wait, unpleasant experience, leaving the store empty – handed. More than 1,000 e-mailed complaints signal that Wal-Mart Stores restocking challenges are more widespread than the world’s largest retailer has said (Dudley). It is not braking news when a huge company struggles with a customer service. Walmart has something of a history of customer-centric snafus ever since the retailer became more of a corporation and less of a family business (InvestorPlace).
Reference
Dudley, Renee. 'Wal-Mart Customers Complain Bare Shelves Are Widespread'. Bloomberg. N.p., 2013. Web. 14 Nov. 2014. - Work cited from: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-02/wal-mart-customers-complain-bare-shelves-are-widespread.html
Fool, The. 'The Consumer Trends That Are Slowly Killing Walmart - Dailyfinance'.DailyFinance.com. N.p., 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2014. – Work cited from: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/03/26/the-consumer-trends-that-are-slowly-killing-walmart/
InvestorPlace,. 'Walmart Is Learning The Hard Way That Service Matters | Investorplace'. N.p., 2013. Web. 14 Nov. 2014. – Work cited from: http://investorplace.com/2013/04/walmart-is-learning-the-hard-way-that-service-matters/#.VGVT7vl_vxQ
Managementexchange.com,. 'Mapping Of Porter’S Value Chain Activities Into Business Functional Units | Management Innovation Exchange'. N.p., 2014. Web. 14 Nov. 2014. – Work cited from: http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/mapping-porter%E2%80%99s-value-chain-activities-business-functional-units
Reporter, BS. 'Walmart To Expand Its India R&D Centre'. Business-standard.com. N.p., 2014. Web. 14 Nov. 2014. – Work cited from: http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/walmart-to-expand-its-india-r-d-centre-112041800013_1.html
