Wal-Mart strengths to take advantage of external environment

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SWOT Analysis of Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is among the world's most successful multinational corporations. The company has successfully expanded its operations in the global market place. Wal-Mart is effectively and efficiently operating in the competitive business environment with the assistance of its strategies and retail stores (Company History, 2009). It is a well known brand in the market and is a leading retail chain corporation in the global market place. The company has a strong position in the retail industry (Wal-Mart, 2008).

The strengths of Wal-Mart for getting advantages in attaining opportunities from the competitive environment will be discussed. Improving over the weaknesses, so as to avoid the threats from the competitive business environment will be discussed. As Wal-Mart is a growing company in the global market place, therefore, it has to focus on maintaining its growth continuously (Bianco, Der Hovanesian, Young & Gogoi, 2007)

SWOT Analysis

Strength: It has the second largest sales in all over the world and is the largest employer in the United States, which provides a decent job to the people without any college education. At present, there are more than 2.1 Million employees in the organization (Biesada, 2009). The huge number of employees, outlets, departmental stores and the effective strategies based on the organizational concepts are the strengths of the company (Company History, 2009).

Its remarkable logistic system is one of its competitive advantages. This logistic system helps the company to ship merchandise from any of their numerous distribution centers and save time and cost by providing cheapest and efficient route (The Rise of Wal-Mart, 2004). Its own website also allows it to increases the sales all over the world. Due to this, the customers would be able to purchase various products at their home. The aggressive low pricing strategy of Wal-Mart saves money of the poor people (Wal-Mart, 2009). It is a necessary food store for groups of people. The friendly and helpful image of the store is its key strength. Its ability to find the customer's needs and accordingly providing goods to the customers is an important strength.

Weaknesses: The biggest weakness of Wal-Mart is its image in the industry. It has been regarded as a giant who eats up the smaller players in the industry. That is why many customers avoid purchasing from the stores and thus, take away a huge toll of expected sales and stock price as well (Bianco, Der, Hovanesian, Young & Gogoi, 2007).

The big stores operated by the company also pose a threat to the environment and are on the target of environmentalists. It is also regarded as a company, which exploits and pays less to its employees. The health-care benefits to the employees are also ...