Strategic Initiative Paper
Alex Money
Jermaine Bailey
Micheal Maddox
Rosie Burton
FIN370 – Edward Hastings
Week Three – June 15th 2011
WALMART
Walmart’s annual report is a comprehensive look at the company's activities throughout the preceding year. Walmart’s annual reports are intended to give shareholders and others, who are financially affiliated, information about the company's activities and financial performance. Also within such a comprehensive report would be plans to attack certain strategic agendas in reference to the company’s long term outlook. Identifying the long-term strategic planning initiative of Walmart will be the focus of this paper. The reader should be able to recognize the strategic initiative within the reading and distinguish how the initiative will have an effect on cost as well as sales. Many times risks are associated with strategic planning. A brief look into the risks associated with Walmart’s long-term planning will also be evaluated.
Strategic Initiative
Wal-Mart is a leader in providing goods and services at lower costs than competitors. The store started with a cost leadership initiative for running the business, and it has worked for the company for years. Wal-Mart has taken this initiative and maximized the plan where no one can directly compete. Wal-Mart analyzes the market and decides what the company can do to continue to thrive and beat out competitors, beating competitors by an aggressive price point is how the company addresses this.
Cost leadership defined by Zanebooks as a strategy that a company uses that provides low costs while concentrating on the cost advantages of all other sources, which requires a balance with cost and quality. Wal-Mart’s success is contributed to no other company able to provide the cost leadership initiative on the same scale. The company uses unrelenting tactics to bring low cost to the costumers. Using cost leadership
References: Walmart annual report (2010). Retrieved from http://cdn.walmartstores.com/sites/AnnualReport/2010/PDF/WMT_2010AR_FINAL.pdf Leadership. Retrieved on 06/13/2011 Zanebooks (2011). Cost http://mba.zainbooks.com/terms/hrm/cost-leadership.shtml Peters, J., & Hottovy, R. J. (2011). Wal-Mart Stores WMT. Morningstar DividendInvestor, 7(3), 18. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Strategic Initiative Paper 1 Strategic Initiative Paper 1 Strategic Initiative Paper 1 Strategic Initiative Paper 1 Strategic Initiative Paper 1 Strategic Initiative Paper 1