The Wal-Mart Company has achieved a lot since its founding. The company uses competitive and innovative approaches in its sustainability strategy. The company has boosted many green products at its peak. However, it needs a new game changer in order to become more sustainable than ever before. The company needs to integrate systems to enable it monitor the environmental standards of its suppliers.
This will include embarking on conservative measures by going green. This will involve changing the way cotton is produced and the textile manufacturing process. Wal-Mart has suffered from serious “Un-Green” issues in the past. There are many environmental benefits that the company will achieve by creating an eco-friendly textile network (Von Weizsacker, Amory, and Hunter 130).
First, going green will help the company increase its sales because it will attract many customers to purchase the company’s products. The strategy will also make the prices for textiles cheaper than before.
Furthermore, going green meets the appeal of employees and customers’ health and makes the price of products acceptable. Wal-Mart will also gain favor of consumers with the same idea, and hence increase its sales, profits, and revenues. The company will also be rewarded tax credits if it utilizes eco-friendly practices in its business.
Through the adoption of go-green strategies, Wal-Mart will be able to provide customers with high quality products at low prices (Going Green 81). This is because the company will embark on reusing and recycling, and hence will cut on costs and maximize on profits. The company will use different forms of advertising to create awareness about its “Green” products.
This will lead to increase in demand for the products, and hence increased sales, profits, and revenues. The fact that many consumers currently prefer environment-friendly products is an added advantage for Wal-Mart (Gunther 45). Therefore, it will gain a competitive advantage over its competitors, and hence will gain huge profits at all times.
There are several challenges that Wal-Mart will face during the implementation of the new game changer. The company will have problems with the suppliers considering that it does not integrate reliable technological systems to help it monitor their environmental standards.
To curb this, it will continue to demonstrate high concern for its stakeholders. Accepting change is also another challenge for the organization. It needs to find strategies to convince and influence employees and consumers to accept the change made to the organization (Ferrell, John, and Linda 36).
Wal-Mart will use this game changer to curb controversies regarding all shareholders including suppliers, employees and consumers among other. The costs for installing the technological systems will also be a challenge considering that the whole process is costly and time consuming. However, the company will hire expertise from low charging organizations to install the system without the immense waste of time.
The company will also face criticism issues considering that it has had “Un-Green” matters in the past. To curb this issue, the company will initiate goodwill with its customers, in order to lure them to buy its products. It will also embark on sustainable initiatives focused on making the organization responsible socially. Other competing companies will copy from Wal-Mart.
For instance, they may as well decide to employ the company’s core competency of “going green” in their businesses. However, this company will curb competition controversies by continuing to decrease its wastes and carbon emissions in its businesses.
The company will also continue to put more emphasis on cost leadership, innovation, and differentiation strategies. All these will help the Wal-Mart Company to be sustainable at the present times and in the future. Therefore, it will gain a competitive edge over its primary and secondary competitors.
Works Cited
Ferrell, O. C., John Fraedrich, and Linda Ferrell. Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.
Going Green. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Pub. 2008. Print.
Gunther, Marc. “The green machine.” Fortune Magazine 154 (2006): 42-57.
Von Weizsacker, Ernst, Amory B. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. “Factor four.” The Top 50 Sustainability Books 1.116 (2009): 127-134. Print.