Walmart store is one of the largest retailer shop that offers excellent customer relations through values and culture that exists in the company. When Sam Walton founded Walton founded Walmart stress, he believed that retailers could have helped people save money and live better. The values enshrined in the company helps us to achieve this objective through serving our customers in the best way possible.
The company believes in the foundation of culture, service to customers and respect for the individuals and striving for excellence and integrity in all operations of business execution. (Roberts & Berg, 2012, p. 74) Adherence to these principals and creates a unique working culture at Walmart, which creates a distinctive working philosophy within the Walmart. Service to customers, integrity, excellence and service to customers are beliefs that define Walmart as a major customer destination.
All the employees are constantly reminded the value of customers and the need to show high levels of service to all the customers. Customers are prioritized in every decision made, and the management supports the associates to serve the customers in the best way possible. Walmart advocates for respect for all the customers, associates and the members of the community. Walmart is built on integrity with values of honesty, fairness, and application of these guides in work stations.
The company has ten-foot rule that expects any Walmart staff who encounters a customer within 10 feet to make eye contacts and offer any valuable help to the customer. The customer feel welcomed and treated in a respectful style. (Roberts & Berg, 2012, p. 84).The staff are expected to recite a motivation anthem referred as Walmart cheer that reminds workers of the values of the stores. Servant Leadership and open doors policy enable the employees to work in unity and a homogeneous unit for the common good of the shop.
These values and beliefs have helped Walmart stores operations to be customer-centric, and all the decisions are meant for better services to customers, conducive working environment for workers and community sensitive business. (Stephens, 2013, p. 9) All the queries from the customers are attended to the same day they are raised, and this has depicted Walmart as customer sensitive business. This values and principles and have enabled the company to earn public trust, and loyalty due to excellence, integrity, low prices and good customers care and services.
Products categories are group of products perceived by the consumers as interrelated in retail stores. Soft drinks, oral care products and vegetables are examples of retail categories. Subcategories are products that have the serve the same purpose, but from different suppliers or modes of action. Walmart has stores has focused to category management as a single business unit. Walmart’s category management determines the decisions on merchandising, assortment, retail prices determination, and shelf space allocation. For each product. Walmart outsources the retail category management from a chosen supplier who they trust to strategic recommendations on insights that are referred category captainship.
The increases in product categories in Walmart stores and reduced human resource to manage these categories have forced Walmart to adopt this new concept. (Kurturus & Toktay, 2013, p. 4) The category captain performs the category analyses and advises Walmart on the brands to add to the category and brands to remove from that category. Walmart asses the recommendation from the captain and may implement or decline to effect it. Walmart designs the captainship contracts in order to allow flexibility in category captain changes. Category captainship have reported positive benefits foe Walmart stores. Walmart stores have assigned Kraft foods, P&G, and Danone to serve as the category captains because of their brands are very strong in the market and consumer availability. These has enabled professional management of categories and sub-categories in the stores.
References
Kurturus, M., & Toktay, B. (2013). business center. category captainship practises in the retail industry, 5(3).
Roberts, B., & Berg, N. (2012). Walmart: Key Insights and Practical Lessons from the World's Largest Retailer. London: Kogan Page.
Stephens, D. (2013). The Retail Revival: Reimagining Business for the New Age of Consumerism. New York: Wiley.
