Abstract
Food products involve stiff competition due to existence of well-established as well as upcoming domestic markets. There is rise of direct foreign investments due to competition. Lack of barrier to entry is one of the root causes of the current cutthroat competition. Different retailers have diverse ways of increasing investment and participation in the food industry due to the lucrative nature of the food-retailing sectors.
Introduction
The supermarket industry is among the largest economic sectors in the U.S. with regard to retailing of food and other non-food products. There has been a persistent growth in the supermarket industry concerning customer base. This has resulted in an increased need for firms to undertake effective promotional strategies by disregarding the recent past restrains on global economic developments.
The 2007 financial crisis resulted in a change in consumer trends due to a lack of customer confidence. Consumers have been demanding lower price for the products and there has been a shift in consumption patterns among households. End users are also spending more on food items than non-food products.
This is due to a reduction in the level of consumers’ disposable incomes, which has affected the financial performance of the firms in the supermarket industry.
This research forms a critical analysis of Wal-Mart reaction to the marketing crisis in relation to some of the Pink’s ‘Right Brain Attributes,’ they have implemented. What are some of the modern and unique factors that maintain the firm’s growth and competitive edge?
Integration of the Story Attribute by Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart has been able to incorporate story as an import strategy to enhance performance. According to Pink (2005), the attribute requires a marketing firm to have strong chronicle of the products and strategies to deliver quality services that the consumer is able to associate with on an emotional level. Furthermore, consumers are concerned about the safety and nutritional value of food products.
Good narrative on the subject of products and services captures the consumers’ trust. 2007 crisis was an evident loss of trust, resulting to increase in regulation within the industry by government and non-governmental organizations. Such regulations in the supermarket industries include refrigerant policies, which require educating the firm on various environmental issues relevant to the industry (Edwards and Day, 2007).
In order to enhance relationship with clients, Wal-Mart chain-link stores have set regulations and internal policies that assist to capture emotional need of clients. Wal-Mart has therefore managed to improve its financial performance.
During 2007, there was a general reduction in the number of shop visits by consumers in various stores, but contrary a slight increase in Wal-Mart’s chain links sales due to change of story strategy (Slack and Lewis, 2008). Generally, depreciation of consumer demands resulted to a minimal reduction of the firm’s financial performance.
Need for company change
For a company to prosper in the ever-changing environment, it is imperative to consider the importance of symphony. In line with Pink’s writing (2005), symphony is ability to have a clear picture of the entire task or element through critical analysis of single components.
Wal-Mart admitted challenges but triumph over with ease because its capacity analysis that most of its affected chain stores had an impact to the development and improvements of the entire corporation. Wal-Mart realized that lack of realistic relationship of its chains stores brought about failure.
In line with Young (2009), change involves application of a concept from one field to an entirely different one in the aim of enabling the company to move a step forward in is day-to-day routine hence flourishing at the end of it all. Wal-Mart is able to consider some solutions to problems in affected stores and apply the solutions in finding possible similar or unique problems in other stores, which are solvable using the same solution.
Advantages of making a number of small changes in capacity rather than fewer large ones
To accomplish some advantages over strategic planning, the company executes the change over in a premeditated manner. Some of these advantages of practicing symphony include attaining motivated clients and leadership abilities. The ability to find some relationship between seemingly dissimilar entities enables Wal-Mart to achieve sustainable performance.
Application of the reverse problem-solving procedure as indicated by Pink (2005), enhances the planning and development and ability to acquaint employees with dynamic ideas. Such connections assist in business growth besides enhancing complete effectiveness.
According to Slack and Lewis (2008), every employee should be aware and posses skills of examining overall business strategic plan by picking up and analysing his or her roles in the implementation process.
Symphony also presents a second advantage of turning strategy into action. The phased approach provides the company’s chain stores with opportunity to link identify and compare performance factors. This is a strategic initiative whereby there is ease in achieving full optimization of individual and company’s activities.
Thirdly, the phased form of analysis, planning and implementation also helps to complement all the other goals and objectives of the entire company. Lastly, there are chances to link all the chain stores to work as a unit for the overall success and better profits (Slack and Lewis, 2008).
Some of the shortcomings concerning the implementation may entail the inability to understand the overall strategic plan fully due to the involved breakdown. The people involved such as the employees may not be in a position of know exactly what is required in order to accomplish the company’s plan.
Company Revolution
In line with Slack and Lewis, (2008) a company should centralize on change more than any other field by emphasizing and having a positive focus towards design. The company should also have new designs of passing information to enhance the communication pathways and to help working in partnership.
A corporation should be able to receive and admit views from different perspectives, this provides chances to intermingle and enhance exchange of ideas. There ought to exist more interactions because the more the company interacts, the better the supplement and ability of gain client acknowledgement from different point of views.
According to Pink (2005), change of products or services designs in a company does not necessarily depend on how much the company holds but on the quality of ideas especially in the midst of challenging market conditions.
In a product company, the merchandise must be emotionally enticing, attract clients and maintain them. Regardless of the products being sold, having strategies that make customers feel emotionally engaged, makes them feel better, appreciated, satisfied and the will to revisit to the same stores in future.
Wal-Mart has good designs that enhance interaction among different parties within a company such as sales personnel and clients. The firm is able to enhance changes due to simplification of the process.
The chain stores are smaller capacities of the company that present greater chances of admitting the design changes, because the interaction is limited within a small geographical area. In addition, the direct-to-direct interaction or the face-to-face interaction within clients fosters common understanding of an issue from the same perspective thus alluring and satisfying the emotional needs of customers.
Currently, Wal-Mart ensures constant changes of marketing designs as a measure of engaging its employees into spending more time in understanding customer’s needs (Edwards and Day, 2007). This is one way of enhancing proper transformations to meet demands. It also helps to determine probability of achieving goals, strengthening the relationship between the clients, management and employees.
Good designs reduce extra costs or time of reinvention. According to Slack and Lewis (2008) proper implementation of a new design involves “effective planning cycles that need fewer ad Hoc interactions regarding operational decisions.”
Strategy to Define Meaning through Empathy
Wal-Mart Company focuses on operation goals, which must not fall short of expectations that complement strategic plans of the organization. The organizational strategic plan starts from the individual level whereby every employee realizes their unique ideas and contributes to the overall performance of the organization.
It is not easy for the company to have these ideas collected, but in most cases, it works out when they are motivated to work together towards common goals. The company uses the small phases change over strategy to avoid implementation failures.
Survey conducted on various company indicate that majority of the companies have a proper strategies to steer off the change but they lack the plan to do so thus very few end up implementing the strategies successfully. This is a clear indication that for a company to achieve strategic success, it has to promote the plan by allowing those responsible to curry out the plan (Edwards and Day, 2007).
In order for Wal-Mart to remain competitive, they tailor operations to meet the needs of the different customer categories. This is mainly so in relation to the firm’s food retailing. By considering the different customer categories, they are able to meet the product needs of a particular target audience effectively. Segmentation strategy also plays a vital role in meeting unique demands.
This refers to the process of identifying various portions of the entire market that are unique from others market segments. Through market segmentation, Wal-Mart is able to attain a higher level of customer satisfaction. By subdividing the different customer categories, the company practices the importance of ‘meaning’ of engagement in business as stipulated by Pink’s ‘Six right brain attributes’ (2005).
It is important to seek deeper meaning of an engagement as a strategy to find divine meaning of life. The company considers its main role of fulfilling the client’s needs through the cosmopolitan nature of its American and international markets.
The strategy assists in segmentation of products and services in relation to the different cultures within the society. By incorporating culture, Wal-Mart is able to provide diverse traditional food products. This means that Wal-Mart is capable of penetrating the different foreign markets effectively.
Conclusion
To attain a competitive advantage, Wal-Mart has to differentiate some the food products. In our differentiation strategy, age of the buyer needs consideration. There is need to acquire more sophisticated tools and formally interactive systems, which are able to manage multiple aggressive situations as well as success factors. Today there is need for proper planning to avoid deadlocks.
Most competitive companies are growing at an alarming rate and therefore situations that minimize space for growth must be avoided at all costs.
Merges are currently quite often, today, there is an obvious complexity regarding amalgamations of firms since various units, processes, and involved measuring standards have unique strategies. The need for change or transformation potential is what leads to merging and potential growth.
References
Edwards, H. and Day, D. “Creating Passion Brands: How to Build Emotional Brand Connection with customers”. London: Kogan Page. 2007.
Pink, Daniel H. (2005). A Whole New Mind: Why Right‐Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead Books (Penguin Group).
Slack, N. and Lewis, M. “Operation Strategy”. London: Prentice Hall. 2008.
Young, S. (2009). Essentials of Operations Management. London, UK: SAGE Publication Inc. Print.