Individual Assignment
Course Title: Strategic Marketing
Code: MKT4204. Section: B
Presented To:
Muhammad Hasan Al-Mamun
Assistant Professor, School of Business and Economics, UIU
Presented By:
Name ID
Jannat Afrose 111 171 258
Date of Submission: 9 August, 2021.
th
1
Evaluate the distinctive capabilities of Wal-Mart.
Answer:
Definition: Distinctive capabilities means capabilities that are complex bundles of skills and
accumulated knowledge, exercised through organizational; process that enables the firm to
coordinate activities and make use of their assets.
Explanation: Wal-Mart must have accumulated knowledge about the products and customers in
order to achieve the distinctive capabilities for the company. Wal-Mart is primarily a discount
retailer because it sells products at the lowest possible price. Selling at the "lowest price". Walton
noted that the essence of successful discount retail is to lower the price of goods as much as
possible, reduce margins, and benefit from increased sales. The company aims to establish a
positive impression by providing the valuable customer satisfaction through the Wal-Mart brand.
Their goal is to allow customers to associate retailers with the reputation of offering the best
prices. Besides these Wal-Mart played a vital role in forming a universal barcodes. The company
has effectively used the information in this barcode to improve inventory management and
simplify its supply chain. In addition, Wal-Mart's huge scale and purchasing power also gave it a
huge influence when negotiating prices with suppliers.
Explain how Wal-Mart’s distinctive capabilities were put into effect to provide superior
customer value.
Answer:
Explanation: Distinctive capabilities put Wal-Mart aside from contenders and made them
effective in the commercial center. The Wal-Mart’s major success was established based on
“Everyday Lowest Price” practice that significantly brings aid in the expenditure of rural people.
Wal-Mart was one of the main organizations to embrace a self-administration plan of action
created by staple chains to offer normal items to inhabitants of humble communities in the South
American. Wal-Mart is proficient to such an extent that it can react rapidly to client or market
needs, by incorporating groundbreaking thoughts and innovations into items. Accordingly,
clients are happy with fast item conveyance and brief installment. The capacity to convey items
that can generally meet client assumptions. They unmistakably see the cutthroat climate, to
2
expect and react to the changing necessities and wants of clients. The capacity to adjust to
various business conditions simultaneously gives clients the upside of decision. Culture is a basis
of everything in Walmart. They define culture as their values. It is a way to improve performance
to achieve its common purpose of creating an excellent first-line work environment, creating
excellent customer service and saving people's money.
Was Wal-Mart able to strike to a balance between the company’s distinctive
capabilities and the customer value requirements in its market targeting strategy?
Explain.
Answer:
Explanation: Yes, Wal-Mart was able to strike to a balance between the company’s distinctive
capabilities and the customer value requirement in its market targeting strategy. We know that
distinctive capabilities means capabilities are complex bundles of skills and accumulated
knowledge, exercised through organizational processes that enable firms to coordinate activities
and make use of their assets. Walmart is one best of the organization in the world as far as the
customer’s satisfaction ranking as concerned. They situated their supply chain in such a way so
that every chain in the link is connected by a centralized database system. In Walmart there is
highly seen stock out because they always connect with their supplier, distributer etc. their
activities are coordinated. They made their targeting strategy based on lower product cost,
reduced inventory carrying cost and provide competitive pricing to the customers. For
determining distinctive capabilities Walmart have cross functional team skills. It means they
share information across the department. And every time information are updated. This
coordination activities makes able to Walmart to create superior customer value. That’s why
Walmart has assets here assets mean they have satisfied customer, brand image. Walmart are
able to create a balance between the company’s distinctive capabilities and the customer value
requirement because they made their strategy based on customers’ needs and wants. Customers
is always preferred to get lower price here Walmart always try to fulfill the value requirement of
the customer those customer whose value requirement is matched with their distinctive
capabilities.
3
Evaluate Wal-Mart’s efforts to become a market-driven organization. Should Wal-
Mart do something more for the purpose of becoming market-driven? Explain.
Answer:
Explanation: Becoming market driven means it describes by which an organization can
gradually become a market driven organization. So to become market driven organization there
are needed three requirement market sensing capabilities, customer linking capabilities and
aligning structure and process. To develop the first requirement or market sensing capabilities it
requires finding and processing information from various sources. And the collected information
must be shared across functions and interpreted to determine what actions need to be initiated.
Here Walmart collect information or data about customers then process the data finally they
share that data across the functions. Walmart has strong marketing research and continues they
collected information and processed and shared across the department. We also see that Walmart
has successfully creating and maintaining close relationship with customers. Walmart
continually collects the information and update that and share across all the departments of
Walmart .they are not focusing on single transaction rather they are focusing on building long
term relationship with the targeted market. Market driven last requirement that is aligning
structure and process it means becoming market driven may require changing the design of the
organization placing more emphasis on cross functional process. Here we can see Walmart has
strong coordination between market orientation and process capabilities and cross functional
department. Walmart always concern with aligning structure process and made their system
based on cross functional skill. So at last we can say that Walmart has strong market research,
strong relationship with customer and it is also known as cross functional organization. So they
have all the requirement for becoming market- driven.
How much of Wal-Mart’s strategy do you think was planned at the outset, and how
much evolved over time in response to circumstances? What does this suggest to you
about the nature of strategy development?
Answer:
4
Explanation: Wal-Mart is the promising retail store in the retail market of US. They are mostly
known as a cost leadership organization for providing the low cost product to the customers in
rural areas. They were successful to grasp the trust of customer and other stakeholder’s of the
company through their market driven strategy. They were able set a balance relation between the
business environment and capabilities of the organization. However some strategies are planned
from the beginning, especially to expand to other countries and markets has failed. After
dominating the US market, they can use some of these strategies to help penetrate the markets of
other countries, such as Mexico and South Korea, to successfully expand their presence and
maintain a competitive advantage.
It is very important to apply appropriate strategy in appropriate situation. Wal-Mart failed in
country like South Korea and Mexico it is because of their implication of appropriate strategy in
appropriate business condition. Wal-Mart’s distinctive capabilities won’t be successful in every
country’s business environment. They need perform an effective market research before going
for an international investment. If a strategy is failed a company shouldn’t seat back and see the
failure they should rather plan on how to overcome the failure of the strategy. Wal-Mart’s failure
in some countries also due to the result of staging and timing. An inefficient strategy has been
developed for the overseas market of Wal-Mart that why the company lost their revenue and
pulled out from those country. This forces Wal-Mart to redeveloped and redesign strategies with
proper market research in the overseas market.