BUS402 Week 3 Discussion Forum 1

Post a summary of your selected company and risks that you perceive based on your prior Environmental Scan and SWOT analysis

Walmart is the company that I have chosen to conduct a SWOT analysis. Walmart is a US-based multinational retailer corporation founded in 1962 by the Walton family. It operates a chain of hypermarkets, grocery stores, and discount department stores. Therefore, after conducting a SWOT Analysis, I found that the main threats that Walmart is facing are competitors' powers and technical issues. Walmart’s competitors have a product differentiation strategy, which helps to create brand loyalty among customers. Amazon is the biggest Walmart’s competitor, operates on a fast, reliable, effective, and well-organized website. This creates a threat to Walmart since its website is slow, and products are not well organized. Besides, Walmart records high employee turnover, which increases the company expenses as it has to train new employees often. Walmart is also faced with labor-related lawsuits, including poor working conditions, unpaid overtime work, low wages, and gender discrimination. These accusations usually create a bad image of the company, which results in consumer reduction.

State the three-sentence trigger/contingency pair and justify your choice of contingency plan using information from the week’s readings

According to Abraham, the contingency plan involves the external cause, the quantitative triggers, and the contingency.

The external threats facing Walmart are changes in consumer perceptions about the products they purchase and the retail market condition.

The quantitative trigger is the reduction in net income.

The contingency: technology contingency plan

Justifying the choice of the contingency plan

Unfortunately, computers crash and internet connections fail at the most inconvenient times. Walmart is always accused of technical problems. Their customers claim that Walmart’s website is slow, unreliable, and products are disorganized. Walmart must have a plan in place just in case the computer fails. After all, consumers expect the website to run as usual effectively. This way, Walmart will add to its competitive advantage.

 Reference

Abraham, S. (2012). Strategic management for organizations [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/